SIXTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VII. 541 



drafters. It costs no more to feed a horse until he is three years old than 

 it does to prepare a three-year-old steer for the market. A steer will sell 

 for from $80 to $100 at the very most and he is more apt to sell at the 

 former than at the latter price, while a three-year-old draft horse, such 

 as every farmer can raise from a high grade mare and a registered stal- 

 lion, will sell at from $150 to $200. The only difference in the cost of pro- 

 dusing the two is in the service fee and in the increased risk, but these 

 factors at the outside will not cost to exceed $25 per colt. It is, therefore, 

 evident that the horse is much more profitable than the steer. 



When we take into consideration that horses must be kept on the 

 farm anyway; that it will cost only a few dollars more per year to feed a 

 1,600-pound mare than to feed a 1,200-pound gelding, and that the mare 

 will do as much, if not more work than the gelding and raise a colt at 

 the same time, it certainly appears as though the price received for the 

 colts above the cost of keeping them until three years old, is just so 

 much clear gain. Don't be afraid that every farmer is going to take our 

 advise. Don't be afraid that the horse industry will be over-done as a re- 

 sult of this article. Farmers are not so easily convinced as that; but, 

 if the arguments appear logical to you and if you are anxious to make as 

 much out of the farm as possible; if you know a good horse when you 

 see it; if you will remember that it is not only necessary to breed to 

 heavy mares, but to mares that are absolutely sound in every respect, 

 and that it is equally necessary that the stallion should be sound, and you 

 live in the corn belt where blue gi-ass, timothy and clover grow like roses 

 in California, discard your poor, light mongrel mares and make a place 

 for the kind that will make you more money in the next ten years than 

 any other live stock you could put on your farm. 



HEREDITARY UNSOUNDNESS IN HORSES. 



F. c. GREXSiDE, v. s., New York County, N. Y. in Breeders' Gazette. 



The question of hereditary unsoundness in all its aspects is by no 

 means an open book to the horse breeder, and it is one well worth study- 

 ing by him, if as thorough a knowledge as is possible of this subject will 

 tend to lessen the percentage of unsound stock produced. Of the various 

 causes which tend to make horse raising disappointing and unprofitable, 

 this is the one of the important ones, if not the most important. Literally 

 speaking it is not so much the inheritance of the disease itself that we fear 

 but it is the tendency to the development of this disease. Comparatively 

 few foals are dropped with unsoundness that impairs their value ulti- 

 mately, but there are many that are foaled with predisposition to the 

 development of unsoundness. 



The study of this subject, then, practically resolves itself into a consid- 

 eration of what constitutes the predisposing causes of unsoundness. They 



