THE PERCHERON REVIEW 
29 
to be put in earlier in the spring and with less 
expenditure of both man and horse labor. Farmers 
who require only labor from their horses find that 
such a system is a good one; they do not have to 
carry so many horses. Those who grow young colts 
advocate this system because leguminous crops fur- 
nish excellent hay and pasture for growing animals. 
Some farmers have been successful in reducing 
the expense of horse labor by using nothing except 
young horses. They have made money by buying 
up underfed draft colts during the winter when 
they are rising three years old. They work them 
a season or two and then sell them. Thirty-month- 
old draft colts oftentimes look pretty tough in 
the hands of some farmers. For some unknown 
reason they seem to have an idea that young horses 
can be roughed along on cornstalks and oatstraw 
like steers, and that practically no grain need be 
fed to colts until they are old enough to work. 
As a result late winter or early spring finds such 
farmers with coming three-year-old colts that are 
poor prospects for spring work; rather than carry 
them over another year they will sell them worth 
the money. Farmers who are good judges of horses, 
as well as good feeders, can pick up colts of this 
kind, break them, work them moderately during 
the first season and then turn them when they 
are four or rising five at a good figure. However, 
such a system cannot be recommended to every 
farmer; it is the unusual man and not the average 
who knows what to buy, how to feed, and when 
to sell. It takes a business mind coupled with 
unusual talent for handling horses to reduce horse 
labor costs by such a system. 
Without a doubt, the use of productive draft 
mares is the most reliable and effective means of 
reducing horse labor costs. It will take fewer of 
them to do the same amount of work that was 
formerly done with 1,000 to 1,200 pound horses. 
Draft mares properly handled can easily accomplish 
all of the work required of the average farm horse 
and raise foals at the same time. They are more 
profitable than geldings or mules because they do 
more than merely to furnish labor. Heavy draft 
mares make possible the use of larger machinery, 
thereby enabling the farmer to do his work more 
rapidly, more thoroughly, and with less expenditure 
of man labor. This means that every farmer who 
properly uses productive draft mares can secure 
his horse labor cheaper than by any other means. 
He gets valuable colts from his mares in addition 
to their work. 
A farmer well known to me bought a pair of 
good grade draft mares as an experiment. These 
mares were five and six years old, weighed around 
1,800 pounds each, and were heavy in foal to pure- 
bred draft stallions. The pair cost $550. They 
foaled soon after he bought them, one a filly, the 
other a colt. The colt was sold at about three 
years of age for $300. The farmer still owns the 
filly and he has refused $250 for her several times. 
In the fall after the foals were weaned he was 
offered 1750 for the mares but would not sell them. 
One of them raised only one other foal, a mule 
that sold for $100 at about ten months of age. The 
other mare produced one filly for which he has 
refused $250 as a three-year-old, one colt valued 
at $125 as a two-year-old gelding, and three mules 
which sold for an average of $100 per head as 
yearlings. This farmer raised mules from these 
mares because he owned a jack and felt that it was 
too much trouble to go several miles to a good draft 
stallion. He sold the mares at the ages of ten and 
eleven for $350. He had owned them for nearly 
six years and had used them practically every day. 
His original investment was $550. He received $700 
for produce sold and he has three left on the farm 
which he values at $625. This makes a total of 
$1,325 for the produce of these two mares, one of 
which was an exceptionally poor breeder, producing 
only two colts in the six years. Assuming that 
these mares earned their yearly keep by the work 
which they did, the profit from this investment was 
$1,125, as the team sold for only $200 less than it 
cost. The owner wants more draft mares because 
he says that he misses them when there is heavy 
spring work to be done. He is firmly convinced that 
such mares are a profitable investment. 
If properly handled, purebred draft mares reduce 
horse labor costs much faster than do grades. It 
is admitted that purebred draft mares require more 
care and painstaking intelligence than do mules or 
draft geldings. However, any farmer is well paid 
who is willing to take good care of his horses. No 
farmer can afford to keep an old pair of geldings 
worth $75 each that will cost $100 per head to keep 
per year for the work they will do. Neither can he 
afford to raise colts that will bring only $120 to 
$140 at maturity when it has cost nearly that much 
to raise them. Purebred draft mares well taken 
care of furnish cheaper horse labor than grades, not 
because they are able to do any more work but 
because their colts will always bring at least $100 
to $125 more at selling time. It costs no more to 
feed purebred draft colts well than it does to feed 
Stallion at Work 
