COLT RAISING PROFITABLE 225 



used extensively for freighting and for travel. All 

 these primitive conditions are passing away and most 

 of the farm -horses are now idle for nearly half of the 

 year. To economize, they are kept on coarse and innu- 

 tritions foods and have little or no exercise. All this 

 results in soft muscles, weakened vitality, soft and 

 distorted feet; and in all ways the horse becomes, 

 during the winter, more or less incapacitated for the 

 difficult spring work. Can these conditions be im- 

 proved? I think they can; and the following some- 

 what specific directions, if carried out, will, it is 

 believed, materially increase profits and better con- 

 ditions. 



Brood-mares should be kept on the farms to a 

 much greater extent than they are, and fewer mares 

 should go to the city. None but mature horses of not 

 less than six to seven years of age should be used on 

 pavements; while the brood-mares and the young 

 animals, with their immature and soft bones and mus- 

 cles, find a congenial home in the green pastures and 

 on the soft, moist earth of the plowed field. 



We believe that the breeding and rearing of horses 

 by farmers who are engaged in mixed farming, where 

 three or more farm- and driving-animals are kept for 

 each one hundred acres of land, can be made profit- 

 able. It costs about fifteen to twenty -five dollars more 

 to breed and rear a colt up to the age of three years 

 than it does to rear a heifer to the same age. The colt 

 may sell for seventy -five to one hundred dollars, while 

 the heifer, unless she be pure and highly bred, may 

 bring thirty -five dollars. The farmer whose time is 



