SIXTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VII. 551 



This farmer is not a good feeder df anything from horses to chickens. 

 He thinks that it is a waste of grain to give his fowls an atom of it in 

 summer, spring or fall. He says they can find plenty of hoppers and 

 grubs to live on, and if they are fed they will not scratch for their own 

 living. As might be suspeeted this man's team does not show either 

 much flesh or care. Tails are full of burrs gathered along the roadside 

 on which he turns them out at night to graze for the reason that if they 

 get something to eat there they do not get it out of his fields. 



The reply to his question was this: "You would better let pure-bred 

 stock alone unless you are prepared to give it pure-bred care." 



If a farmer cannot keep a pair of 1,100-pound scrub geldings in flesh 

 and heart it is a foregone conclusion that he never will do anything with 

 pure-bred draft mares. It is well enough to say that every farmer should 

 keep pure-bred stock, and so he should, provided he knows enough to oare 

 for it; but if he can not or will not care for a scrub team there is no 

 hope for suceess with pedigreed mares. Pure-bred stock needs feed. It 

 cannot be maintained on scrub rations, scrub methods. The man who 

 knows enough to feed his horses so that thqy keep fat all the year 

 around can afford to buy draft brood mares. 



<«? 



4 



TURNING MARE AND FCAL ON GRASS. 



breeders' gazette. 



A subscriber in Georgia asks this question: 



"I had a valuable mare drop a foal at noon just after she came out of 

 the harness. She was doing farm hauling and did not seem to be dis- 

 tressed when unhitched. She ate part of her oats and then began to 

 sweat. My foreman took her out of the harness and turned her into a 

 small lot, whereon she lay down and was delivered very easily of what 

 seemed to be a lusty colt. I fed the mare liberally ste before and when the 

 foal was two days old turned the two out to pasture. In ten days the 

 foal was dead from scours which nothing would stop and the mare seemed 

 to lose 200 pounds of flesh. They were not housed nor fed after being 

 turned out. I think that grass should have been enough for them." 



In replying to this question the writer labors under the disadvantage 

 of not knowing just exactly what sort of grass the mare was turned on. 

 It is probable that it was Bermuda or lespedeza or some of the other 

 southern sorts, but in any case the principle has not been touched. When 

 a mare taken from the harness and hard feeding drops a &al, then is, 

 within forty-eight hours, turned on grass with her foal, the death warrant 

 of the youngster at least is signed then and there, just as surely as though 

 he was shot by the hand of his owner. 



