52 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[February, 
ed, if raw, is made, to a large degree, digestable. 
As to tlic quantity eaten, I am not yet able to 
speak, but when I get my new 425 cubic feet 
steaming closet ready, — at the side of my 
Fairbanks' scale, — I shall be able to report the 
actual number of pounds consumed per week, 
which, with an inventory of the live-stock, will 
enable any farmer to judge whether I am saving 
more or less than the 33 per cent that the advo- 
cates of steaming claim as the economy of the 
system. All that I absolutely know about it is, 
that my stock like the food, and flourish on it, 
and that my manure heap was never so uniform 
in quality before. There lias not been a case 
of scouring, nor one of tendency to constipation 
since I commenced steaming. The only verdict 
I can now give is, that steaming is entirely and 
easily practicable, — whether it is practical 
(whether it pays, that is), our friend, Fairbanks, 
shall decide for us during the coming month. 
Horse Papers for Farmers— No. 2. 
BY X SPECIAL CONTRIBUTOR. 
One lucky farmer in a thousand maybe able, 
by good fortune, to buy just such a horse as I 
would have him own. The other nine hundred 
and ninety-nine will have to begin at the be- 
ginning and breed him; and they should under- 
stand at the outset that there is a wrong way to 
set about it — many wrong ways, and only one 
right way. It won't do to buy a defective old 
mare (wind-broken, sprained, blind of one eye, 
clam-footed, or club-legged,) because she is 
cheap, and think that she is good to breed from 
because she is good for nothing else. From 
such a start no good end can be reached. A 
good thorough-bred stallion would, no doubt, 
get from such an animal a colt vastly better 
than herself, but sooner or later her constitu- 
tional defects would be sure to show themselves 
in the progeny, and half the advantage of the 
sire would be lost. As a rule, the colt will 
take his size and constitutional defects from the 
mare — his spirit and wiry strength from the 
horse. Hence we see many high-bred, spirited, 
and intelligent horses hobbling about the coun- 
try, with the weaknesses of their ill-chosen 
dams suppressing their usefulness. With 
sound and healthy mothers, these horses might 
have been the very best farm horses in the land 
— as it is, they sometimes turn out among the 
worst, their extra energy and "blood" having 
only served to wear out their delicate lungs or 
limbs. Nor can such inferior be depended on 
to produce valuable horses with any stallion — 
if not with the best, surely not with anything 
less than the best. 
It takes fully five years to breed and raise a 
horse for use, and this fact alone makes it im- 
perative to use every care to make the final re- 
sult worth the time and money expended. 
The mare need not be a beauty, and need not 
be fast, but she should be roomy in the barrel, 
wide in the hips, have plenty of lung room, and 
good bone — not so much a large frame as a firm 
one. Bony excrescences, and fatty puffings on 
the legs should be especially avoided. She 
may be as largo as you please, and had better 
be a good feeder and a stout worker. Of 
course all improvements on this type — in the 
way of fine head, bright eyes, thin ears, silky 
mane aud tail, sloping shoulders, high withers, 
prominent muscle, and broad, flat, "clean" 
lower legs, big windpipe, and large nostrils, and 
thin hide aud swelling veins, will be well 
worth seeking, and worth paying an extra price 
for, as they indicate an infusion of thorough 
blood, which is an advance iu the direction we 
are working for. But these manifest advantages 
should not blind us to the great essentials of 
a sound constitution and a good frame. At the 
same time, there are many defects which 
cheapen the price of the mare without lessen- 
ing her value for breeding. If she has had an 
eye put out by accident (provided the other 
has not shown a constitutional weakness by 
going blind in sympathy with it), if she has 
become knee-sprung from abuse, (not from 
natural weakness) or has even had a leg broken 
and reset, her value for breeding may be in no 
wise impaired. It will usually be cheaper, 
however, to buy an animal that is able to do 
good service, and earn her living while she is 
breeding. To sum up the case in a few words, 
— If the mare is of good form, is iu good bodily 
health, and is free from constitutional defects, 
she will do to breed from. Defects resulting 
from accidental causes may be overlooked un- 
less they are a source of present irritation. De- 
fects that have been inherited are quite likely 
to be transmitted ; and those which are still at- 
tended by febrile symptoms, and may occasion 
pain in the part during the period of pregnancy, 
are hardly less likely to produce a tendency to 
weakness in the corresponding organ of the 
young. The mare should not be served by the 
horse while she is su fieri ngfrorn soreness of any 
muscle or bone, or of the feet ; and she should 
be so used during pregnane}', that causes of 
local pain should be avoided. I incline to the 
opinion that a tender-footed mare, if kept in a 
soft pasture, or iu a stable with a soft clay floor, 
and never allowed to hurt her feet so that her 
attention will be called to their defects during 
her whole pregnane}', may produce a colt with 
perfectly sound feet. This, however, is only an 
opinion, and is as unsupported by positive evi- 
dence as are most of our ideas of reproduction. 
I have assumed that the mare is to be pur- 
chased. If she is already owned on the farm, 
so much will be saved. Iu either case she 
should, before meeting the horse, be brought to 
the most perfect state of health that she is ca- 
pable of — having enough (but not too severe) 
work, generous (but not too high) feeding, and 
thorough grooming. Her bowels should be 
kept free, and her kidneys active. When she 
is in the best possible condition for work, and 
not until then, is she fit for breeding. 
So much for the mother of our new horse. 
Much might be written on the subject, but this 
is all there is room for here. Those who desire 
more definite information, as all farmers should, 
must go to the volumes for it. 
Whatever the dam is to be, — whether she 
comes up to my modest description or not, — 
the sire should be invariably of pure blood. This 
restricts us, in this country, to the Arab, the 
Percheron, or Norman, and the Thorough-bred 
(the English race-horse). I know that I am 
flying in the face of the Great American Idea, 
aud that letters will be sent to the Agriculturist 
office, asking why I have not included the 
thorough-bred Morgan, and the famous 2.20 
trotters ; and I can only meet the issue squarely, 
and say that the thorough-bred Morgan is a 
thorough-bred mongrel, and that the fast trot- 
ter is an effect, not a cause. The experieuce of 
the world — with every class of domestic ani- 
mals—points directly to the law, that no certain 
improvement can be made unless the sire is of 
pure blood. My mongrel chickens are superb, 
but they are from a pure Dorking cock; and 
my half-bred pigs are very fine,because they are 
from a pure boar. In like manner may we go 
over the whole range of farm stock, and see 
how indispensable it is that the sire must be 
thorough-bred if sure results are to be attained. 
I am not now considering the breeding of fast 
trotting horses, but of farm horses — horses of 
all work. Those who breed trotters have but 
one aim. They care neither for size, form, 
fineness, nor constitution, save as these help to 
spin the wheels of their spider-wagons; conse- 
quently they are not tending to the establish- 
ment of a fixed type. The Arab, the Norman, 
and the Race-horse are fixed types, of long 
standing, aud with the same power to transmit 
their characteristics to their offspring that the 
Herd-Book Shorthorn or Jersey bull have — that 
is, a power, when coupled with a low bred ani- 
mal, of impressing its own character on the 
progeny, and nearly obliterating the character 
of the dam. A good common mare may or 
may not have a good colt by a trotting stallion. 
By a stallion of pure blood she almost invaria- 
bly will have one strongly marked with the ex- 
cellences of the pure stock. The underlying 
principle is thus stated by Stonehenge. " Like 
produces like, or the likeness of some ancestor. 
The trotting stallion's colt may resemble his 
dunghill grand-mother. The pure-blooded 
stallion has had no plebian ancestors ; the colt 
may resemble any of them, and still be good." 
The excellences of the Arab and Norman 
horses are such as to make it wise to breed to a 
pure stallion of either race ; but they are so 
much less common in this country than the 
" Thorough-bred " that, as a rule, they are not 
available to farmers. 
Of the Thorough-breds Herbert says: "Of 
course it is better that the sire, when it is possi- 
ble, should be of a racing stock that is famous 
for courage and stoutness, such as any of the 
stock which trace remotely to Herod, Cade, 
Regulus, Eclipse, or others of known fame; but 
thus far it is not essential, or a sine qua rum, 
since every blood horse, even if, as Sir John 
Fenwick said, in the reign of Charles II., he 
be the meanest hack that ever came out of 
Barbary, is so infinitely superior.in stoutness and 
quality, both of bone and sinew, as well as 
blood, to the best cold-blooded mare that ever 
went on a shodden hoof, — that he cannot fail to 
improve her stock, whatever may be his com- 
parative standing among racers. All, therefore, 
that the breeder has to do in this instance, 
(raising work horses) is to satisfy himself that 
the horse is really thorough-bred." 
This is not, perhaps, quite all, for some — not 
many — thorough-breds are vicious, aud some 
have defective feet, or a tendency to go blind — 
and in these modern times the stock is being 
permanently injured by the growing custom of 
short races for very young animals, which re- 
sults in a weedy, leggy character, that it would 
not be well to introduce among working horses, 
though, even then, blood wUl tell. 
The best — the very best — sire, is a sound and 
good-tempered thorough-bred, of the class 
known as " four-milers," — that is, horses able 
to run, within a couple of hours, three heats, of 
four miles each, at an average rate of, say 
1 min. 55 sec. to the mile, carrying 130 to 140 
lbs. weight. A horse that has retired safely 
from the turf after such a career as this, is a 
treasure to farmers which, in this country, does 
not always offer. There are probably a dozen 
or twenty such thorough-breds now standing in 
the United States, besides many more not much 
inferior to them. And if any well-to-do fanner 
really wants to raise an invaluable horse for his 
own use, it will pay, even at considerable out- 
lay, to send a good mare a long distance in 
search of one of them. 
