MARKET CLASSES OF HORSES. Ill 



will not do it, the feeder must, and the price the 

 farmer receives must he lower in consequence. 

 Many a time I have seen grain pay the farmer 

 a dollar or more a bushel when used in fatten- 

 ing horses. The experiments made along this 

 line by the Illinois Experiment Station are right 

 in point here. I commend tlie bulletin describ- 

 ing them to all farmers. This feeding process 

 is an easy one. Put the horses in stalls, tied by 

 the head. Feed them all the grain and hay they 

 will clean up and give them all the pure water 

 they will drink. They must be brought to full 

 feed gradually and the food must not be 

 changed. Exercise is not necessary. Big draft- 

 ers will gain as much as five or six or even seven 

 pounds a day on all the corn they will eat. The 

 feeders who make a business of fattening draft- 

 ers for the market use corn mostly, with some- 

 times a little bran, and they never change the 

 feed from the time they start the horses until 

 they land them in the market. This rule of no 

 change applies absolutely. 



In the great markets horses are classed oc- 

 cording to their *^job.^' Attempts have been 

 made to differentiate sharply between the va- 

 rious classes, but I shall make no effort to draw 

 any strongly marked lines, for the reason that 

 it is impossible to do so. One cannot mark 

 didactically lines that exist only in the most 

 shadowy form at best and are constantly chang- 

 ing. Classes go by certain names all over the 



