FARM HORSES 147 



a much heavier horse can be used to advantage than on 

 a rough New England farm. Another important con- 

 sideration is this : are other horses kept for the road, or 

 must the farm horses also be employed to take the 

 family to church or market, and the young people to 

 a dance now and then? In short, the farmer must ask 

 himself, Do I need a farm draft horse, never to be 

 driven faster than a walk, or a lighter, "general pur- 

 pose" animal? If he decides in favor of the lighter 

 horse, he cannot do better than to select a trotting- 

 bred mare or gelding of good bone and substance, 

 weighing, let us say, 1,150 pounds or more. Such a 

 horse will do all that a 1,400 pound draft horse can do, 

 and much more besides. There are large farms in 

 England where all the work is done by thoroughbred 

 mares, and there are large stock farms in this country 

 where all the work is done by trotters of purest blood. 

 Some persons would go much farther and say that the 

 trotting-bred is the best horse for any kind of farm; 

 and on this point I will cite the interesting experience 

 of Art Hinrichs, a well-known writer on the horse. 



My people are of German origin, and when they emigrated to 

 America they brought with them, at considerable expense, 

 German horses. While the fathers lived none of the Hinrichs' 

 farms were worked by anything but Holstein horses, and many 

 a mile of good Illinois and Wisconsin soil was turned over 

 by horses that were as typically German as the men who owned 

 them. However, as the boys came into possession of the various 

 farms of their parents they turned to the Percheron horse for 

 improvement of the tribe imported by their parents. The 

 result was surprisingly beneficial. They were a better class 



