CARE AND MANAGEMENT OP BROOD MARES. 165 



the horse for two months or more when tried regularly and 

 then come in season. 



My plan is to begin early in the season, say in March, and 

 then try them to the horse regularly every two weeks during 

 the season. 



As to the productive period of mares the best age is said to 

 be from five to fifteen years. Breeding fillies at two years of 

 age often seriously interferes with their symmetrical develop- 

 ment. Three years is perhaps young enough to breed a mare 

 and from then on in some cases to thirty years, or as long as 

 she continues to produce and raise good foals. 



The period of gestation in mares is variable. In my own 

 experience of upwards of thirty years, as a breeder, the average 

 time that mares have carried their foals has been eleven months 

 and nine days, and has ranged from ten months and twenty 

 days to twelve months and twenty-three days. Difference in 

 breed makes no difference in time. It has been reported that 

 mares have carried their foals upwards of thirteen months. 

 A case of this kind was once reported of a mare in Jessa- 

 mine county, Ky., who carried a foal thirteen months and 

 twenty-eight days. 



MARES MARKING THEIR FOALS. 



Mares worked with other horses frequently color or mark 

 their foals after their mates ; also colts are often marked from 

 fright, sympathy, and curiosity, and breeding for color with a 

 view of forming a fixed type or in breeding matched horses, 

 the breeder cannot be too careful on this point. 



I once had a pair of Vermont Black Hawk mares, both as 

 black as jet. I bred them to a brown Morgan stallion, without 

 any white, in 1862, and at the time I bred one of these mares a 

 sorrel mare with a white stripe in her face was brought to my 

 stalljpn, and I noticed at the time that my mare took quite a 

 good deal of interest in this outside mare, but thought nothing 

 of it until foaling time for my mares, when, instead of having 

 a matched pair as I had reason to expect, one of my mares 



