FIFTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART X 687 



the supply of our meat products will more equally meet the demand. 

 While in Belgium I met a farmer who had worked in America and spoke 

 the English language, and at his urgent invitation I dined with him. 

 After the meal was over he asked if I knew what I had been eating. I 

 assured him I had the utmost confidence in him as a host, and had eaten 

 what he had put before me and asked no questions. Then he told me the 

 worst, and right there I was convinced and, though prejudiced as all 

 Americans are, I had to confess that "horse meat is good to eat" if you 

 do not know what you are eating. 



The first thing necessary to raise a draft horse is to have a draft colt. 

 Our farmers now have a very fair start in stocking their farms with a 

 good class of mares, and almost every neighborhood has at least one good 

 imported or American-bred registered stallion of one of the recognized 

 draft breeds. These mares, weighing from 1,400 to 1,600 pounds, mated 

 with a good stallion, produce colts from which we must grow the draft 

 horse. 



When mares are worked, the colts should be left in a roomy stall in 

 the barn and given all the oats they will clean up. They should weigh at 

 six months old from 700' to 800 pounds. This is the critical time in the 

 life of the draft horse. If properly cared for, he should never stop grow- 

 ing during the first winter and should develop into a big, rugged colt 

 weighing 1,000 pounds at twelve months old. But if he is turned out 

 into the stalk-fields and has to seek shelter on the sunny side of the straw 

 stack he will soon slide into the scrub class and will weigh no more at 

 twelve months than when weaned. 



On the other hand, perhaps a farmer will kill his colt with kindness 

 and keep him confined in a box-stall and give him all he can eat and 

 drink and will tell how much his colt has gained. In the spring he has 

 developed along with his colt a pair of bog spavins that puts him in the 

 scrub class several degrees below his straw-stack-wintered brother. The 

 happy medium between these two extremes has enabled me to have the 

 best success in colts. If a man will start a colt when taken from the 

 mare in the fall by giving him, in addition to the oats which he has 

 learned to relish, a ration of separated cow's milk, he will soon learn to 

 meet his master half-way when he sees the bucket and will drink more 

 than is good for him, if not prevented. I usually allow a colt about a 

 gallon morning and evening and prefer to feed it while yet warm. 



Size alone does not make a draft horse; we must have also color and 

 quality. A colt cannot develop these qualities in a box-stall. In raising 

 cattle we strive to put on fat but in raising horses we must develop the 

 muscles or the colt will be useless when put to the hard work for which 

 he is intended. I provide my colts with a good box-stall and see that 

 they have a good bed and a good feed night and morning, and every day 

 they must run at large over the farm. I usually have a bluegrass pasture 

 which has been allowed to grow up in the fall to furnish them some 

 green feed in addition to the fields of standing stalks, the usual winter 

 feed on a cornbelt farm. With this kind of treatment colts will go out 

 in the spring not fat but large, well-developed, healthy yearlings, more 

 than half the job of making them first-class draft horses being accpm- 



