SIXTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VII. 549 



loose. If this does not take place in the course of three hours the assist- 

 ant should not wait longer, but should supply himself with warm soap 

 suds and a good syringe and stay with his patient until the bowels have 

 moved freely. There are as many colts lost every year from lark of atten- 

 tion to the bowels as from navel leak, and both can be corrected by a good 

 attendant at the proper time. 



Do not attempt to give the colt anything by the stomach with the object 

 of moving the bowels, as you will fail oftener than you will succeed and 

 such treatment will derange the whole digestive system; while with the 

 syringe you will remove the cause of the trouble without interfering with 

 the other digestive organs. 



If, after the colt is a week or so old, the mare is needed for her work, 

 the colt should be broken to halter and allowed to stand a few hours at a 

 time, tied to the manger during the absence of the mare, but they should 

 not be kept apart for half a day at a time; the mare's udder becomes too 

 distended and the colt too hungry for the good of either. There is also 

 danger of the mare's udder suffering and of the colt's bowels becoming 

 deranged from an over amount of milk taken at one time from a mare 

 that is heated and mora than likely fretted and excited. 



I have often seen a colt or a pair of colts taken to the field with the 

 mares, tied to a wagon and left at one end of the field. Several times 

 during the half day the colts were allowed to suck and in a short time, 

 say two or three days, they were turned loose and they stayed at the end 

 of the field waiting for the mares to return, not trying to follow them 

 about the fields and wearing themselves out. They would content them- 

 selves with picking around and would always feel fresh; while in the 

 other case, as soon as the mare had stopped and the colt sucked it would 

 drop down and stretfci out on the ground, showing its fatigued condition. 



SMALL MARES AND HEAVY STALLIONS. 



BBEEDERS' GAZETTE. 



A reader in Oakland, Missouri, asks this questian: 



"Please tell me if common work or scrub mares weighing all the way 

 from 900 to 1.400 pounds may safely be mated with a Percheron or Belgian 

 stallion weighing 1,700, 1,800 or 2,000 pounds. If so what sort of a draft 

 horse will the produce be in regard to weight and market value?" 



Mares of the weights named have for years been bred to heavy 

 stallions. There is no danger to be feared in parturition. It has been said 

 by those who do not like the draft horse that if a small mare is bred to 

 a stallion much larger than herself she will have trouble in the foaling 

 and probably die from not being able to get rid of her offspring, but that 

 is all rubbish. Of course it is true that mares have died from this cause, 

 but it was not for the sole reason that the foal was begotten by a stallion 

 much larger than the dam. Nature regulates all that sort of thing in its 



