Heart to Heart Talk 

 with Breeders 



I sit down to have a quiet chat with you, for those of you who are familiar 

 with my writing know that my style granting that I have such a thing is purely 

 conversational. I aim to write as I talk and hence the caption of this article. 



You represent an interest that has grown steadily for the past forty years and 

 yet there is no unity of action among you, except in the organization of a society to 

 get rid of worthless broodmares by selling them, without pedigrees, for beasts of 

 burden on the plantations of the far South. That is a good institution and, if I 

 lived in Kentucky, I would be an active member of it. But there you "stop short," 

 like the grandfather's clock in the song. 



You make no effort to get? rid of worthless stallions. To begin with, the most 

 of you overtax the powers of your entire horses by taking too many mares to them. 

 I knew the case here, in California, of a man who took 102 mares to his stallion, 

 Owen Dale, bred very much like Medoc. There were very few thoroughbred mares 

 in this State at that time and he served five in that season, all the property of hi's 

 owner save one. These were bred to him early in the season and he served four 

 of them but once. These four bred three good winners and Owen Dale, big and 

 handsome as he was, never got a winner afterwards. He served from 85 to 100 

 mares for each of the four seasons that followed and at twelve years old he died 

 from exhaustion. Now, I don't suppose there is any man among you that would 

 use up a horse like that, but I don't believe there is one horse in fifty that is virile 

 enough to serve fifty mares in one season and be of any mortal account afterwards. 

 Of course you have heard how Muley, in England, got the Derby winner, Little 

 Wonder, at 26 years of age ; how American Eclipse got that brilliant horse Zenith 

 at 24; how Falsetto got The Picket, winner of the Kentucky Derby and Brooklyn 

 Handicap, when he was 24; and a few other cases like that, all of them quite ex- 

 ceptional, and we all know that exceptions serve to prove the force of any rule. 

 The truth is that, with the usage most stallions get nowadays, most of them are 

 comparatively useless before reaching eighteen. 



Then most of you will buy anything that is entire and imported. You look at a 

 horse and examine his breeding. He is by a fashionable sire and out of a mare by a 

 sire that was fashionable twenty years ago; and you never stop to consider whether 

 he comes from a line of sire-producing mares or not. Where did you ever find a stallion 

 that was successful and not bred from sire-producing mares ? You will say Hanover and 



