32 The Practical Stud Groom. 



In Volume XXI. of the General Stud Book, it will be 

 seen that the average number of barren mares each year is 

 about 33 per cent., a truly formidable total when one 

 realises the bitter disappointments and financial losses 

 entailed. Among the horses on the prairies of Canada, when 

 the stallion and his harem have roamed free and unfettered 

 all the year round, 5 per cent, would be a liberal estimate 

 of the proportion of barren mares under such natural condi- 

 tions. It goes without the saying that every employer and 

 servant would gladly see this gulf between 33 and 5 per cent, 

 bridged, or at least curtailed. May not a comparison of the 

 life led by the prairie-roaming mare with that led by the 

 fashionably-bred matron on a modern thoroughbred stud 

 farm throw some light on the problem why one is so much 

 more prolific than the other? 



NATURE'S METHODS. 



Speaking broadly, it is fair to say that Nature plans 

 that all young shall be brought forth at a season when food 

 for its sustenance is plentiful. That is when the Spring sun 

 sheds its life-giving warmth on the newly born, nurtures the 

 milk-producing herbage for the herbiverous animals, and 

 causes the tender shoots and buds to burst forth for the sup- 

 port of the grub and insect, which in turn furnish food for 

 the young bird in the nest. Clearly, then, when man 

 arranges that a foal shall be dropped in January, when frost, 

 snow and searching winds prevail, and all herbage is dor- 

 mant, he outrages one of Nature's elementary laws. May not 

 the high percentage of barren mares be one of the penalties 

 he pays for his interference? Close observation of horses 

 under natural conditions certainly tends to confirm this 

 view. The prairie-roaming in-foal mare is seen in January 

 winning a bare sustenance, mid frost and snow and scanty 



