MANAGEMENT OF THE STALLION 
17 
‘sickle’, curby-formed, ‘crooked’, ‘boggy’ or ‘sprung’ hocks, flat, 
weak, unsound hoofs, weak, ill-formed knees, ‘washy’ coupling, 
short upright pasterns, etc.” Alexander also gives a list of com¬ 
municable diseases which should be guarded against in breeding animals, 
namely: glanders, farcy, ‘‘maladie du coit,” infectious abortion, mange, 
leucorrhoea or “whites,” urethral gleet and simple pox. 
According to Miles , 35 “Bone spavin, curbs, ringbone, navicular disease, 
and other similar affections of the bones and joints, are of frequent 
occurence in the hereditary form.” Too, it is claimed that “in horses, 
strain of the back-tendons, swelled legs, grease, and roaring, are often 
hereditary; while a predisposition to rheumatism, malignant and non- 
malignant tumors, chronic cough, ophthalmia and blindness, epilepsy, and 
a great variety of nervous disorders, is inherited by them . . .” Miles 
cites Finlay Dun who believes that “a disproportion in the width and 
strength of the leg below the hock to the width and strength above the 
hock, predisposes to spavin; a straight hock and a short os calcis, in¬ 
clining forward, gives a tendency to curbs; ‘round legs and small knees, 
to which the tendons are tightly bound, are especially subject to strains’; 
while a predisposition to navicular disease is found ‘in horses with 
narrow chests, upright pasterns, and outturned toes’.” It is also brought 
out by Miles, in the words of Dun, that “many farm horses, as well as 
others without much breeding, are remarkable for consuming large 
quantities of food, for soft and flabby muscular systems, and for round 
limbs containing an unusual proportion of cellular tissue. These char¬ 
acters are notoriously hereditary . . . Such characters indicate pro¬ 
clivity to certain diseases, as swelled legs, weed and grease.” And again 
Miles remarks that “If the leg below the hock is disproportionately long 
and the os calcis is short (giving a narrow hock), a strain of the joint, 
or some other form of the disease, is liable to result from ian amount 
of work that would not be severe in a limb of proper proportions.” 
Gay 36 asserts that the ‘transmissibility of many of the so-called heredi¬ 
tary unsoundnesses has not been established; even roaring and moon 
blindness in horses, the only two things for which stallions are dis¬ 
qualified in France, where the most comprehensive system of inspection 
is, are now believed to be more frequently the result of preexisting in¬ 
fluenza in the one case, and of an enzootic infection in the other, than 
of hereditary influences.” 
Quoting Youatt , 37 “there is abundant proof that blindness, roaring 
broken wind, sidebones, spavins, ringbones, laminitis, and navicular 
disease have been bequeathed to their offspring both by sire and dam.” 
And Axe 38 believes that spavins, curbs, ringbones, sidebones, roaring, 
whistling, stringhalt, shivering, specific ophthalmia, and cataract are the 
most harmful among the heriditary diseases and unsoundnesses of the 
horse. 
In this connection it may be well to consider such unsoundnesses as 
are deemed sufficient to bar a mare from being bred to a Government 
stallion by the Bureau of Animal Industry of the United States Govern¬ 
ment. According to Reese , 39 these unsoundnesses include bone spavin, 
ringbone, sidebone, heaves, stringhalt, roaring, periodic ophthalmia, and 
blindness, partial and complete. 
3. Other Considerations Affecting Selection 
Carlson 6 emphasizes the need of testing the stallion for its wind. He 
says there is no disease of the horse that is more likely to become 
hereditary than laryngeal hemiplegia. In discussing this subject, John¬ 
stone 5 suggests that in testing the horse for this defect go and pass by as 
if to punch him on the flank and if he grunts then it is an indication 
of the animal being windbroken. 
