462 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



not more than one-third of those making that weight or over can be 

 classed as good, sound animals, weighing 1,600 pounds or more. It is 

 therefore evident that not to exceed ten out of every hundred horses 

 reported by the census are of real draft stamp. 



Every horse of draft weight but of inferior character (which by reason 

 of such inferiority sells for from $40 to $50 less than another animal of 

 the same weight but of correct type) represents that much actual loss 

 to the farmer who raised him, for in nine cases out of ten it did not 

 cost a cent more to breed and rear the good one. At $50 per head it 

 means at a veiy low estimate a loss of more than a million dollars in 

 1911 alone on the draft horses marketed at the six leading markets in 

 the West. Had all the draft horses offered on these six markets in 1911 

 been so bred and fed as to reach the standard of the 5 per cent that 

 were good, the farmers who produced them would have had at least a 

 million dollars more in pocket. 



During the week ending October 21 the demand for sound draft horses 

 was as strong and prices as good as at any time during the year. One 

 gray five-year-old Iowa-bred gelding sold for $500, a thin roan five- 

 year-old gelding bred in Illinois brought $400 and numerous pairs sold 

 from $650 to $700 on the Chicago market; yet at the end of the week 

 400 horses were carried over for lack of buyers, and Harry McNair 

 stated that they could not be disposed of, even at considerable loss. John 

 S. Cooper, Harry McNair and others emphatically declared there was not 

 a sound horse in the entire 400, and scarcely any of them were up to draft 

 weight. 



Why are four-fifths of our draft horses as offered on the market, be- 

 low standard? Lack of breed and lack of feed spell the story. Detailed 

 figures from ten states having stallion registration boards show only 

 one pure-bred draft stallion where there should be three, and a large 

 proportion of those in use are unworthy. Many colts that are well bred 

 are half-starved during the first two or three years of life, and never 

 do grow out properly. Draft horses bred right and fed right sell the 

 same way. 



That we can produce as good horses as can be bred anywhere in the 

 world cannot be doubted. The American Clydesdale breeders have dem- 

 onstrated their strength in many years of hard-fought show-ring battles, 

 have matched the best Scotland has produced in stallions, and have twice 

 won the stallion championship at the International. They have more 

 than equaled the mother country on mares, having won the champion- 

 ship nine times out of eleven International shows. Shire and Belgian 

 breeders are fewer in numbers, and have accomplished less, but have 

 shown splendid promise in colts and yearlings. 



American Percheron breeders are particularly proud of Big Jim, for 

 seven years the bright star of the Armour six-in-hand, an American-bred 

 gelding with four years of International championship honors to his 

 credit, in which time he met and defeated the champion geldings of the 

 old world, which were imported especially to humble this grand old war- 

 rior of the show-ring. 



