Management of Foaling Mares. 33 



sun-cured prairie grass ; very low in flesh, but withal healthy 

 and bright of eye, with her nine months' old foal still taking 

 toll of her fast diminishing milk supply. This double strain 

 of short commons and milk production throughout the winter 

 months, has the dual advantage of keeping the foetus in the 

 womb small, and the mare's generative organs and the 

 pelvis, through which it is eventually expelled, unencum- 

 bered with layers of unyielding fat, with the result that 

 parturition is swift, easy and practically painless, and the 

 generative organs are left in a suitable condition for subse- 

 quent impregnation. 



When we contrast the foregoing with the system pur- 

 sued with the thoroughbred mare on the stud farm of to-day, 

 we find much food for reflection. The thoroughbred matron 

 has her foal weaned, at the age of four or five months, in 

 July or August, after which she revels in good herbage till 

 late Autumn, with its cold nights, arrives. She then sleeps 

 in her warm well-bedded box, is fed on the best of oats and 

 hay, and naturally waxes fat and jolly, and the foal she is 

 carrying, participating in the good things going, grows to an 

 unnatural size. Are not all the elements of disaster here? 

 The mare's generative organs are overlaid with masses of 

 hard unyielding fat and the foal is abnormally large. In 

 place of the quick, easy parturition in genial sunshine, we 

 get prolonged, fierce straining, tearing of tissues, 

 haemorrhage, and bruising of the mucous membrane, in the 

 dead of Winter, with the risk of chill and subsequent 

 inflammation and leucorrhcea. Under such conditions is it 

 surprising that the mare's visit in a few days' or weeks' time 

 to the stallion, and all subsequent visits that season, are 

 fruitless, and the return in the Stud Book is the sadly too 



prevalent one of " Barren to ." The old Yorkshire 



saying, " The straw-yard bull gets the most calves," neatly 



