WORK FOR HORSES AND BOYS 271 



positive loss ? Or why riot raise hothouse lambs and 

 get ten dollars per head for them at eight weeks of 

 age ? But how can they do better until they have 

 more knowledge and skill? 



I have suggested that raising one or more colts 

 yearly would be practicable; since horses must be 

 maintained to do the work of the farm, and since 

 men and teams, in many cases, spend four to five 

 months of the year in comparative idleness. Often a 

 fairly good brood-mare is already at hand; and what 

 better use can she be put to during the winter than 

 nursing a colt, and what better and pleasanter work 

 for the boys than caring for and "breaking" colts? 



One illustration of the results which followed 

 acceptance of advice similar to the above may be 

 given. A young farmer living from "hand-to-mouth" 

 secured a mare which had many of the characteristics 

 of motherhood. She was bred four successive years to 

 a smallish, symmetrical, dark -colored Percheron stal- 

 lion. The result was four colts. Being large, sym- 

 metrical and strong, they were used at light work as 

 soon as they had passed the age of two years. One 

 pair was sold when the colts were nearly four and 

 five years of age for three hundred dollars cash at the 

 farm. The next day after the sale the two younger 

 colts were harnessed, and in a week they were doing 

 the work of the pair sold. Here, with no great effort 

 or expense, nearly six hundred dollars' worth of horses 

 had been produced in five years, and the net profits 

 realized were more than the net profits on all other 

 products of the little farm for that period. This man 



