148 THE HORSE 



of horses and could do the work allotted to them much easier 

 and more cheerfully, and likewise to the growth of various 

 bank accounts. 



But later still they traded or sold these horses and replaced 

 them w^ith big, strapping, standard-bred mares, some of them 

 weighing as much as 1,300 pounds, and at this writing a total 

 acreage of 2,700 acres in various farms are worked by standard- 

 bred geldings or mares — mostly mares. These wooden-shoe 

 cousins of mine have found that a pair of 15.3 standard-bred 

 geldings, weighing 1,200 pounds each, can do anything that 

 must be done about the farm as easy as a 1,600-pound pair of 

 " heavies " could do it, and a danged sight quicker. The same 

 argument holds good in their experience with anything in the 

 standard-bred tribe that weighs 1,100 or over and which 

 stands 15.25^ hands or over. They want nothing on their farms 

 but standard-bred w^orkers. Besides, four quarts of oats go 

 farther with the trotting-bred horses than six had served any of 

 their predecessors. 



There may be some exaggeration here, and I cannot 

 help thinking that for deep plowing and pulling heavy 

 loads and nothing else, a draft horse would be more 

 efficient than the trotting-bred horse. Sixteen hundred, 

 or possibly seventeen hundred pounds should, how- 

 ever, be the limit. Horses heavier than that are apt 

 to be too slow and clumsy for profitable farm work, 

 and they recover less quickly than the smaller draft 

 horse from disease or injury. 



There Is one kind of draft horse that has been raised 

 and used almost wholly for farm work, and that is the 

 Suffolk Horse, formerly known as the Suffolk Punch. 

 These horses have been bred for three centuries In the 

 counties of Suffolk and Norfolk on the east coast of 



