214 
BREEDING CITY HORSES. 
around three or four-minute speed to a buggy or road wagon. 
We would not advise trying for such a horse unless the mare is 
trotting-bred and fine. The stallion cannot do it all. Having 
a well-bred, handsome mare breed her to the handsomest and 
speediest trotter you can find, and the produce will almost cer¬ 
tainly be a roadster that will bring a good price. If the colt hap¬ 
pens to come a misfit—if he does not measure up to the stand¬ 
ard of sire and dam—you will have a common driver, worth 
very little. That is the danger in breeding for high-class light- 
harness horses. But do not think you can get a light roadster 
by breeding to anything but a high-class trotter. There is no 
other horse comparable to the American trotter in producing 
ligfht roadsters. The Russians have some handsome-bloodlike 
and game trotters, but they are scarce in this country and should 
not be selected as against the type that we have evolved here. 
When we come to producing the heavy-harness horse—-the 
coacher—the farmer has many prescriptions thrust upon him. 
There is a large constituency of trot ting-horse breeders who in¬ 
sist that the trotter, bred for generations for the sole purpose of 
speed, is the best sire of coachers. If he were, never a hoof of 
foreign-b^ed coach horses would have been landed on our shores. 
It was the crying need for something which we did not possess 
that brought the coachers and the hacknevs across the water. 
The man who breeds to a trotter with the expectation of get¬ 
ting a coach horse must look well to his material. His mare 
must be decidedly on the coach type and have ample “ spread 
that is, she must not be slab-sided, with cat hams. The stallion 
must be one of the rare types among trotters. They are occa¬ 
sionally found ; they would have been more plentiful but for the 
craze for extreme speed. He must stand 15.3 to 16.2, be full- 
made in barrel and quarters, with ample length of neck and as 
much finish as possible. 
But it is to his action that special attention must be paid. 
It is the bare fact that the trotter has been bred for generations 
to exactly the action that is not wanted in a carriage horse, 
namely, a long, sweeping, extended stride, with a straddle be¬ 
hind. This is one great difficulty in breeding carriage horses 
from trotters. When you do get knee action you will generally 
find very poor hock action and a straddle-gate behind. A horse 
thus gaited is only half a high-stepper. Avoid wide and drag¬ 
ging hock action at all times. The clean, attractive, trappy 
Morgan action is what is wanted. It is a good seller. 
There are those who insist that farmers shall breed to the 
