THIRTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART XH 607 



good bred horse and a poor fed one and I will show you a poor horse. 

 Show me a poor bred one and a good fed one and I will show you a fair 

 horse. Show me a good bred one and a good fed one and I will show you 

 a market topper. 



• Too much cannot be said in this crusade against scrub sires. From 

 what I have seen I believe that a lot of farmers ought to have a guardian 

 when it comes to live stock breeding. They seem to think that a few dol- 

 lars saved in the breeding end of the transaction is money made. They 

 seem to loose sight of the selling end where the values are at least 50 

 to 100 per cent more from good pure bred sires than from scrubs. I call 

 such methods five cents wise and five dollars foolish. What man is there 

 contemplating building a skyscraper that does not give due consideration 

 to the foundation and the material entered in the construction. It is 

 just as important to have the best of feet, pasterns, and joints with a 

 heavy, flat, clean, hard, flinty bone in the horse and when you get such a 

 foundation you can build on the top just as large as you like. 



I am sorry to see farmers neglecting the feed and fit their horses for 

 market. They feed their beef and dairy cattle, their hogs and sheep, 

 that they may receive top prices, but the horse is sold neglected and 

 thin, his hair standing up and rough as he can be. 



Now there is no animal that will pay better to feed and fit for market 

 than the horse and the farmers of Iowa are losing $100 to $150 on every 

 horse so neglected. There are just two things that are sure to bring suc- 

 cess or failure in draft horse breeding, namely — breeding and feeding. 

 The one is just as important as the other. Either one of them properly 

 handled and the other neglected means failure. 



Then how and when shall we begin to feed these colts? I worked for 

 a man one time who raised his horses as scavengers and on the first of 

 March as the colts were nearing three years old he would say, "Boys, 

 you had better get these colts in the barn and feed them a little corn and 

 break them to hitch as we will have to work them this spring." How im- 

 proper is such management. How many do nearly the same thing. But 

 I am thankful that we are advancing from such methods. Instead of 

 waiting until the colt is nearing maturity before we begin to feed let us 

 begin at the proper time. Say eleven months before it is born, give this 

 good mother who is expected often to do her day's work in the field and 

 nourish her own life, the life of her baby foal, and the life of the unborn 

 making in all three lives to nourish, give her some healthy feed. Do 

 not neglect her, give her plenty of bone, muscle and milk producing rood, 

 such as oats, bran, alfalfa meal, some nice clover hay, raise a small patch 

 of sugar cane for winter feed. They enjoy it, so much. There is no better 

 or cheaper feed to raise than cane. A good piece of land will produce 

 eight to ten tons per acre and there is not a pound of waste. They will 

 eat every stalk clean and the larger the stalk the better they like it. 



In the winter time turn the prospective mother out in the fields every 

 day for exercise. She needs it and enjoys it in any weather except a cold 

 rain or sleet storm. Don't expect her to break the roads through the 

 snow banks, nor do the heavy hauling in the muddy spring-time roads. If 

 you do you are sure to have some fatalities. I keep a pair of heavy geld- 



