334 Western Live-stock Management 
by the draft horse buyers at the present time is an animal 
with soundness, ruggedness, and the general character- 
istics of serviceableness stamped upon her body and with 
a certain degree of beauty. In selecting the mares, it 
is better to procure one or two good mares that will pro- 
duce the type of stock which is salable than to buy three 
or four which are off-type, unsound, or which may fail 
to breed. It is not essential that foundation mares 
weigh a ton, as often the extremely heavy mares are 
coarse and masculine in appearance, and not as reliable 
breeders as those of average weight and more feminine 
appearance. 
FOUNDATION STALLIONS 
The sire of pure-bred horses is more than one-half the 
stock. The reason for this is that he has one-half the 
influence on the offspring, and in addition he is the adver- 
tising and sale feature for the entire bunch. Occasionally 
a mare will become noted for the kind of offspring which 
she produces, but the sire is invariably the animal which 
puts the breeder at the top with any kind of pure-bred 
stock. On account of this, it is essential that the sire 
be more than an average horse; in fact he should be an 
out-standing individual. More attention than usual 
should also be paid to the breeding of such horses, espe- 
cially among breeders of draft horses. There are few 
draft horse breeders who are good judges of pedigrees. 
PEDIGREES AND REGISTRATION 
A pedigree in the broadest sense of the word is a record 
of ancestry. In common use, however, the term is applied 
to the published record of breeding and ancestry issued 
by some association, organized for the express purpose 
