THE PERCHERON REVIEW 
15 
farmers in the South make more money where the 
period of handfeedmg is much shorter and where 
expensive barns are not required for shelter in 
winter? Everything is in our favor and the cost 
of raising a big horse to merchantable age can, 
with good management, be brought down to a point 
not approachable by our Northern and Western 
neighbors. Our best horses never see shelter ex- 
cept- such as a straw shed affords. Raised in this 
outdoor way, with good feeding of course, our horses 
grow larger, develop stronger constitutions, have 
heavier bone, more quality and, being acclimated 
from birth, can do nearly if not quite twice as 
much work as those brought in our section from the 
West or North. 
Granted a standard degree of merit, throughout 
all branches of American industrial and commercial 
enterprise the main thing nowadays considered is 
to reach the very lowest cost of production. Surely 
there can be no question that horses can be pro- 
duced in the South for less than in any other part 
of the country. I do not wish, however, to be un- 
derstood as claiming that every part of the south 
is adapted to the breeding of live stock. That is 
not true. Very large areas are not, but enough of 
our territory is adapted, if utilized properly for this 
purpose, to produce all the heavy horses the South 
needs. Where grass cannot be grown horse breeding 
should not be attempted. Under such conditions 
the cost is too great and besides the finished product 
is never nearly so good as that of more favored 
territory. 
In nearly all the Southern states there are sections 
where limestone water is available and the bluegrass 
flourishes. Can one ask for more ideal conditions 
for horse breeding? We bred great race horses and 
the same conditions that produced the unequaled 
bone, muscle and endurance of the thoroughbred 
guarantee a similar inheritance to the drafter. 
Boston, Planet, Lexington, Bush, Leader and other 
great race horses were bred in the South. Boston 
ran and won about forty four-mile races — races 
over the same distance as the steeplechases of more 
modern days. 
Bred also in the South, I call attention to St. 
Luke, St. John, Bothwell, Plato, White Garter, 
Herculoid, Sir Wooster and McCann, the last four 
bred in my county. Most of these were good race 
horses when ten years old, showing that the con- 
ditions under which they were raised gave them 
feet and bone as hard as nails. Any old Confederate 
soldier attached to the cavalry service will bear 
witness to the lasting qualities of the southern- 
bred horse under the most trying conditions. Many 
users of draft horses in the big eastern cities, es- 
pecially Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia, 
will bear witness that a drafter bred in the South 
will outwear two average western-bred horses of 
similar weight. Piling up more testimony, I may 
add that the master of one of the most prominent 
hunts in the East buys all his horses in Virginia 
and says that he does so because they can be hunted 
barefooted in cold weather — certainly convincing 
evidence of the splendid quality of the hoof. In 
sum, no section of the United States is better 
equipped by nature than the South for the profitable 
production of the heavy horse. 
No doubt too the South will for many years use 
many mules and we know that nowadays the de- 
mand is for a much larger hybrid than formerly 
found favor with Southern users. These big mules 
are the progeny of mares possessing a large per- 
centage of draft blood. Hitherto the man who de- 
sired to breed his own big mules has had to import 
his weighty mares from the North or West at great 
expense both in prime cost and transportation 
charges, hence the solution of this problem of big 
mule production in the South lies in the grading 
up of the native mare stock by the use of good 
draft stallions. Quality means money as applied 
to mules. The more quality the big mare possesses 
the higher will be the class of her foal to a jack. 
A Group of Percheron Fillies Bred in the South 
