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the age of four or five years, to bring more than fifty 

 or seventy-five dollars ; and if any hereditary ailment 

 should descend to it, it will not bring enough to pay 

 the keeping of the dam for the six months she suck- 

 led it. Now suppose you had taken the opposite 

 course, and purchased a large, well-formed, good- 

 blooded mare, free from hereditary ailment, and put 

 her to a judiciously selected stallion, you would have 

 stood a fair chance of raising a colt worth double 

 the price of the former, and you would also have 

 had the profitable labor of the mare." Two of these 

 gentlemen followed my counsel, disposed of their 

 scrub mares and purchased others, and are now 

 raising, perhaps the best horses in their vicinity. 



Another subject of importance, to which I will 

 now call attention, is the unpardonable practice of 

 breeding mares at two years old. This hinders the 

 growth and spoils the form of the mare. Thus, be- 

 fore her constitution is matured or her strength de- 

 veloped, she is overladen, which crushes down her 

 joints, especially the fetlock, changes the natural 

 symmetry of the body, and also has a tendency to 

 injure the form of the back, and ribs. After this 

 burden is got rid of, at foaling, then comes the re- 

 duction on the system by the suckling of the foal. 

 All these influences combined destroy the strength, 

 form and size of the mare. Besides all this, the foal 

 comes of small size, not having had room in the 

 space allowed by nature, and will necessarily be very 



