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NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 22, 1913 
Vol. LXXII. No. 4191 
WEEKLY. $1.00 PER YEAR 
A COOD FARM CROP. 
Making the Farm Team Profitable. 
A farmer in this county has estimated as nearly 
as he could the amount of work performed during 
the year by his six work horses. He allowed 10 
hours for a day’s work, and found that his horses 
only worked 73 full days during the year. True, 
they did more or less work on almost every day, but 
on many days they worked but one hour in the 
day, varying to two, five or seven hours, while on 
a good many days both in Summer and Winter sev¬ 
eral of the horses did nothing at all. He figured 
that his horses average two hours’ work a day for 
the year. Notwithstanding that they had to be fed 
and cared for 365 days. Horses on most farms ap¬ 
pear to be an expensive necessity, and the prices paid 
for horse power, when figured down fine, are pretty 
high. 
WHY NOT BREEDING MARES?—It does appear 
that the average farmer who keeps sufficient teams 
to do his work promptly and thoroughly in the busy 
seasons, has little work for those horses in the slack 
seasons. Would it not, therefore, be wise to keep 
largely breeding marcs of the draft breeds, and have 
those mares growing a colt while not working? It 
may not be wise to keep all breeding mares, or to 
have all the mares breeding at once, but then there 
does not appear to be any good reason why, at least 
half the number may not be breeding mares. If there 
are six working horses kept to do the farm work, 
ai least three or four of them might well be breed¬ 
ing mares. These mares need not be purebred if 
right otherwise, although there would certainly be 
more money in breeding registered stock. They 
may not be any better animals, but the registration 
certificate accompanying the sale may be worth $200 
—& big profit in the investment on a dollar’s worth of 
paper obtained from the record association. It does 
not cost any more to feed a pure-bred draft mare 
than it does to feed a grade mare of the same size. 
The purebred mare will do just as much work as the 
grade mare. One good purebred stallion colt ai one 
year old will readily command as much money as 
will a pair of five-year-old grade geldings. 
VALUE OF WEIGHT AND ACTION.—While the 
profits are easily much greater in breeding purebred, 
registered animals, the general market looks more to 
weight and action. The action of a draft horse is 
a point which is receiving more attention than it 
formerly did. A horse to command the very highest 
price must be able to move well. He must be good 
at the walk and also to do trotting at a fairly rapid 
pace when required to do so. Length of stride and 
the straightness of stride are two most important 
points to be considered at the walk. Height of ac¬ 
tion and fiashiness are attractive, but not necessarily 
utility points. A wobbling action is a feature which 
good horsemen condemn and is discriminated against 
at all the leading horse markets; clumsiness is bad. 
In breeding draft horses too much attention cannot 
be given to weight. At leading draft horse markets 
horseflesh sells at the rate of 25 cents a pound for 
each additional pound from 1600 to 1800 pounds; for 
50 cents a pound from 1800 to 2000 pounds, and 
from 2000 pounds to 2200 pounds from $2 to $2.50 
a pound, provided of course that the horse is sound, 
well built and desirable in every other respect. In 
other words, the difference in the price obtained for a 
horse weighing 1950 pounds over a horse weighing 
1800 pounds may possibly be $75, while the difference 
in price received over that for a 1600 pound horse 
may be $150. Thus, the heavy ones are the kind we 
should aim to produce, because at best we will get 
plenty of the lighter weights to meet the demand for 
the lighter class of work horses. 
VALUE OF DRAFT HORSES.—Just why the 
average farmer has not been keeping high-class draft 
mares is one of the questions which strikes almost 
every man who has had experience is producing 
horses in this country, but more particularly by the 
men who have had acquaintance with the methods 
pursued in the production of horses in practically 
ali of the European countries, Draft horses are 
needed to perform the labor necessary to be done on 
the farm. Is there any reason why a considerable 
amount of this work should not be done with a 
good class of brood mares, purebred or otherwise? 
If the English farmer, the Scotch farmer, the French 
farmer and the Belgian farmer, on their small farms, 
find it profitable to keep a pair or two pairs of usual¬ 
ly purebred draft brood mares to do their farm 
work, why should not the same policy be a wise on? 
to pursue in this country? When this policy be¬ 
comes more general two things, both of which are 
very much in evidence, will disappear; the impor¬ 
tation of such large numbers of stallions, many of 
which are a detriment to the industry, and the pres¬ 
ence of the glib-tongued chap whose business is to 
organize companies of farmers to purchase these “im¬ 
ported’’ stallions at from two to five times what they! 
cost on the other side of the Atlantic. In practically 
every one of the European countries in which draft 
horses are produced more than 75 per cent of them 
are produced on the small farm, and by the tenant 
farmers. These farmers not only require their pure¬ 
bred draft mares to do the major portion of the 
farm work, but they also require them to rear a colt 
] 
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A GOOD FARM TEAM CULTIVATING ASPARAGUS IN SOUTH JERSEY. 
