128 THE HOKSE BOOK. 



stallions weighing 2,000 pounds or more should 

 be used and the mares as large as they can be 

 got. It is a great temptation to sell off good 

 young mares when, for instance, a mortgage 

 payment is coming due and a shipper offers a 

 long price, but it will pay best in the long run 

 to save religiously the best young mares, and 

 use them for breeding stock. 



Crossing over from the French breeds to the 

 British and from the British to the French or 

 Belgian will produce commercial drafters that 

 will sell to splendid advantage, but it is always 

 best to stick to the one chosen breed, piling 

 cross upon cross and so continually approaching 

 a fixed ideal. The influence of proper environ- 

 ment has already been so fully dealt with that 

 it is only needful now to say that the drafter 

 is a product of highly artificial conditions and 

 must be highly fed or he will not grow large 

 enough. 



Drafters which bring the highest prices are 

 always offered for sale about as fat as they can 

 be made. The buyers who bid the longest prices 

 for drafters invariably want them fat and are 

 willing to pay well for the adipose tissue. Con- 

 sequently the farmer who lets his grain lie in 

 his bins and offers his horses thin in flesh is 

 merely throwing money away. An instance is 

 in point. Matt Biers, the well known Illinois 

 shipper, recently paid a farmer $265 for a thin 

 four-year-old gelding, which sold at auction in 



