SEVENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK-PART III. 89 



perience in the i)rodiiction of pure bred draft horses in this country, 

 or has any acquaintance with the methods pursued in the production of 

 horses in practically all of the European countries. Is there any more 

 reason why uhe average farmer should keep pure bred cows, pure bred 

 ewes, or pure bred sows than in the case of pure bred draft mares? 

 Draft horses are needed on the farm to perform the necessary farming 

 operations. Is there any good reason why a considerable amount of this 

 work should not be done with good, pure bred brood mares? If the 

 English farmer, the Scotch farmer, the French farmer and the Belgian 

 farmer on their small farms find it profitable to keep a pair or two 

 pair of pure bred draft brood mares to do their farm work, why should 

 not the same policy be a wise one to pursue in this country. When this 

 policy becomes more general on the rich farm lands of the central west, 

 two things, both of which are very much in evidence at the present time, 

 will gradually disappear: First, the importation of such a large number 

 of stallions, many of which are a detriment to the industry, and, second, 

 the presence of the glib-tongued chap whose business it is to organize 

 companies of farmers to purchase these stallions at from two to five 

 times what they cost on the other side of the Atlantic. In practically every 

 one of the European countries in which draft horses are produced more 

 than 75 per cent of the same are produced on the small farms and by 

 the tenant farmers. These farmers not only require their pure bred 

 draft brood mares to do the major portion of the farm work, but they 

 also require them to rear a colt each year, which in turn is sold to pay 

 the rent of the ground used. In this way these people have been able to 

 pay high rents and in addition comfortably support their families. 



It will pay the average farmer in this country to keep pure bred draft 

 mares. It does not cost any more to feed a pure bred draft mare than 

 it does to feed a grade mare of the same size. The pure bred mare 

 will do just as much work as the grade mare. One good pure bred stallion 

 colt at one year old will readily command as much money as will a pair 

 of high class five-year-old grade geldings. The speaker has in mind at 

 the present time a dozen or more farmers in Iowa, Illinois and Kansas 

 who are using pure bred draft mares to perform their farm work, and 

 in addition raising good colts from the mares each year. The stallion 

 colts find ready sale when from one to two years, at from $400 to $700 

 each. These men have settled the question as to whether or not it will 

 pay to keep pure bred draft mares. One farmer in northern Illinois at- 

 tended a neighbor's sale in March, 1903, and in order to help matters 

 along bid on a few things which he thought he did not need. He es- 

 caped trouble until a pure bred five-year-old Percheron mare in foal was 

 led into the ring. He bid on her and she was knocked down to him at 

 $300. He thought he did not need her, thus offered her to another neigh- 

 bor for $290, but did not succeed in making the deal. He kept the mare 

 and she has raised him a good colt each year. He has had the mare a 

 little more than three and one-half years, she has done her share of 

 the farm work, he has sold three of her colts for $1,250 and has one left 

 for which he has refused the small sum of $500 before it was eight 



