TYPES AND MARKET CLASSES OF LIVE STOCK 459 



The writer once visited a farm where he was shown a sixteen- 

 year-old grade draft mare of good type and individuality. On 

 the same farm were five good mares, all out of the aged mare 

 mentioned. Other of her numerous offspring had been sold 

 at good prices. The mare had made the farmer money and 

 was still making it, for at the time of this visit she had a fine 

 filly foal by her side. But the owner was not satisfied. "Think 

 how much more money I would have made," said he, "if I had 

 begun with a purebred registered mare. If the old mare had been 

 purebred and registered, the value of every one of her foals 

 would have been easily doubled, and it wouldn't have cost a 

 cent more to raise them." The lesson to the young breeder 

 is clear, start right, even if it means starting slowly by buying 

 one young registered filly, and from her building up a breeding 

 stud of fine mares. 



The farms of the Middle West and East are well adapted 

 to the intensive plan of horse production, because most of the 

 farms are not large, and usually the teaming is done by the 

 owner himself, or by one or two hands who are always under 

 close observation. On big farms, with incompetent and ever- 

 changing help, if valuable brood mares are kept, they are liable 

 to be injured if used to do the farm work. The writer is not one 

 of those who advocate keeping brood mares in idleness. They will 

 be healthier and will produce stronger foals if worked in modera- 

 tion. The plan should call for working the brood mares, but not 

 working them as hard as we work geldings or mules. Let them 

 earn their board, and board them well. They may be worked 

 well up to foaling time if care is taken not to back them to a 

 heavy load, or put them to a hard strain. Mares have been hur- 

 riedly unhitched and unharnessed while cultivating corn or doing 

 some other moderate work, and have foaled thrifty, well-developed 

 foals, the equal of any. But such mares have been well fed and 

 cared for during pregnancy, and they should be given as long a 

 vacation on pasture after foaling as the farm work will permit. 



The most profitable horse breeding in France, Belgium, 

 England, Scotland, and America is done on the intensive plan, 

 on farms of moderate or small size, by farmers who are good 

 practical horsemen with a taste for doing things well. There 

 is ample room in the United States for much more horse rais- 

 ing on this plan, and we have always had too many inferior 

 mares, too many cheap stallions, and too many cheap horses 

 hunting buyers. 



