SIRES 237 



in the parish", or a comparatively trifling number in a district, notwith- 

 standing that he was well supplied with mares the previous season. This 

 is an occurrence so common as to be within the knowledge of everyone 

 concerned with horse-breeding or stud-management. 



Explanations of various kinds are always forthcoming to account for 

 these stud failures, some implicating the mares and others the season, 

 but the shrewd breeder, while allowing for the possible adverse influence 

 of both these causes, does not fail to recognize that other and more potent 

 factor, the sire. 



How much of this failure is due to impotence on his part cannot be 

 precisely stated, but there can be no doubt that under the circumstances 

 presently to be referred to it is the predominating quantity. When we 

 consider the exhausting services which stud-horses have to render during 

 the season, and the indifferent preparation many of them undergo in 

 anticipation of the work before them, it is not surprising that they 

 sometimes fail to give the results expected of them. 



Without condition, the services of a sire are no more capable of yield- 

 ing a full measure of success than are those of a race-horse, and to call 

 upon him to perform a season's work in its absence is as much an injustice 

 to the horse in body and reputation as it is to those who use him. 



The practice of turning a horse away into a loose-box after the season is 

 over, to spend the winter in confinement, and too frequently on indifferent 

 fare, is, even in these enlightened days, of common occurrence, and not 

 unfrequently the foundation on which subsequent failure of the stud is laid. 



When to this is added that bullock-like obesity into which he is rapidly 

 brought during a few weeks of forcing treatment in the spring, little 

 then remains to be done to defeat the object for which he is intended. 

 It is not suggested that fat horses are necessarily impotent, but that they 

 fail to meet the full and legitimate requirements of those who use them,, 

 and pay for a fruitful service. In saying so, we recognize the fact that, in 

 order to command liberal patronage, sires, and especially those of the heavy 

 breeds, must be brought up to the show standard, and at a time too when 

 they should be in " racing trim". 



In this connection it must be admitted that the users are not altogether 

 free from blame for the losses which they suffer, and until they can judge 

 " make and shape", and select their sires in the absence of soft superfluous 

 flesh and fat, owners of stallions will continue the abuse to which we have 

 referred. 



Want of condition not only renders reproduction uncertain, but lays 

 the individual open to attack from all sorts of diseases and accidents of 

 a crippling nature, and to none more than that bane of stallions laminitis. 



VOL. III. 81 



