Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 March 1879 — HORSE-BREEDING FOR GENERAL FARMERS. [ARTICLE]

HORSE-BREEDING FOR GENERAL FARMERS.

The following is a portion of to dress delivered by J. H. Sanders of the National Live Stock Jourru** before the lowa Fine-Stock Breede* Association, at its late meet* 1 # 111 -Des Moines; It is one of the pedhanties of the msiness, that ever man should exaggerate the value and promise of his own horse. To a slang phrase, but a very express)' e one, I know how it is myself; I’v J been there.” I have also seen many *f my friends in the same condition and have noted the effect upon tieir purses. The situation was tersek expressed by a friend of mine, who upon a certain occasion, was listenirg to the glowing account a third party was giving of the Wonderful promise of his little bay mare, that, “ without any training to speak of, could trot in 2:50.” My friend heard him through, then shrugged his shoulders, and said, “ So you have a 2:50 trotter, have you, and you intend to have her trained? Well, now, if you will go and buy a cow that sucks herself, you will have two pieces of property about equally valuable.” And my friend afterward found out to his cost that it was true.

We meet with cases of this kind almost every day? hearly evbry neighborhood has some of these horses of wonderful promise, that are supposed to show marvelous bursts of speed. Their unsophisticated owners imagine that they possess the favored one that is to “set the world on fire.” They put the price up in the thousands, spend hundreds of dollars upon training, buy boots, and straps, and toe-weights, and bits, without number; talk horse on every street corner; attend races; read the Spirit of the Times, and Turf, Field and Farm more closely than they read the Bible; and imagine that the royal road to fame and fortune lies straight before them, and they are traveling upon it with a trotting horse ata 2:20 gait. You see one of these enthusiastic men next year; his ardor has perceptibly abated; he talks less horse; and, when you ask about his Wonderful trotter, he talks about the crops or the weather; when pressed he reluctantly tells you that his mare has gone amiss—a little lame or tangled in her gait—and he has concluded to give her a season’s run at grass. You see him again next year. He has lost all interest in turf sports, and denounces them on account of their immoral tendency. He has quit taking the Tur J and Spirit, because he thinks “the influence on his boys is not salutary! ” And when you ask him what has become of his little bay mare, he looks absent-minded, and at once rewembers that he has an urgent business engagement around the corner!

This is no fancy sketch; the shoe will fit hundreds of cases in various parts of the country—the legitimate result of the disappointment which, in nineteen cases out of every twenty, follows the exaggerated hopes of those who breed or train trotting horses. There is any amount of fun in the business, but precious little profit. The conviction grows stronger upon me, with each year, as I review the previous season, that the breeding of fast trotting horses must be left to gentlemen of large means, who, by the selection of the choicest strains of blood in both sire and dam, and by superior facilities for breaking, training and seDing, may meet with a measure of success that win warrant its continuance as a business.

This has for many years been true of the business of breeding running horses in this country, and it is each year being concentrated into fewer hands. A half-dozen breeding establishments furnish 90 per cent, of the race-horses that appear on the American turf; and general farmers cannot compete with such establishments with any prospect of success. They caunot afford to train for themselves; they have but few opportunities for selling; and even were they able to secure brood mares of the choicest strains, and to secure the services of the most renowned sires of racers, they would be at a decided disadvantage as compared with such establishments as those of Mr. Alexander and Col. Sanford. If we confine our discussion to the question—How can we breed the horse that is best adapted to the farmer’s use ? I cannot too highly recommend a cross of the thoroughbred. I have on many occasions, with both voice and pen, advocated the use of good, stout thoroughbred stallions upon the half and three-quarter-blood French or English draught mares, that are becoming so plentiful throughout the Western States, for the purpose of producing a class of horses pre-eminently suited to the uses of the farmer. And lam fully convinced that such a course of breeding will be found much more certain to produce from these grade draught mares a horse especially adapted to the farmer’s use than a further infusion of the cart or draught horse; because the thoroughbred possesses, in a marked degree, action, courage and energy—qualities in which these heavy draught horses are usually deficient. It is true that all thoroughbreds are not superior horses even in these respects; but, from the very fact that for centuries they have been bred with an especial view to to the race course, we find that they have been perfected to a wonderful degree in speed, stoutness, energy and resolution as a breed. But with these qualities there have been perpetuated, and perhaps intensified, some vices—as a restless, nervous, excitable temperament—which certainly are not desirable qualities in a farmer’s horse.

The various breeds of heavy draught horses, as a rule, are just the reverse of the thoroughbred in these respects. They are rather heavy, dull and sluggish ; hence that which in its intensified form is a vice in the thoroughbred, being carried to the opposite extreme in the draught horse,has also become a fault; and for this reason no fears need be entertained, as a general thing, in the matter of disposition from a cross of these breeds. If a change occurs in this particular at all, as a result of cross-breeding, it is almost certain to be for the better; although it is a wellknown principle of breeding that the produce will sometimes inherit the disposition or temperament of one parent, and the form of the other; but, as a rule, there is a more or less perfect blending of the peculiarities of the ancestry, modified somewhat by each other, in the produce.

If the object of the breeder is to produce horses especially adapted- to driving on the road, or for the trottingcourse, from good road mares, I should very much prefer a well-bred trotting sire to any thoroughbred; because I believe that, for this purpose, our American trotter is the best horse in the world. In many cases I would prefer a good, stout, well-bred trotting stallion to a thoroughbred for getting general-pur-pose or farmers’ horses; the choice depending entirely upon the class of mares that are to be used. But in all cases, whether a thoroughbred or a trotting sire be chosen to produce a farmers horse, the qualities of the animal himself should never be lost sight of in our admiration of the breed or family from which he Springs. It should never be forgotten that he is quite as likely to transmit his defects, if be has any, as his good qualities. The sleeping hours of a plant were changed by a French chemist,

ly exposing it to a bright light At night and placing it in a dark room during the day time. At first the leaves opened and closed irregularly, but at length submitted to the change, unfolding at night and closing in the morning.