HORSE – BREEDING SOCIETIES.

Waipa Post, Volume I, Issue 42, 8 September 1911, Page 4

HORSE - BREEDING SOCIETIES.

MOVEMENT IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA. A very practical step has been taken by the South Australian Government in the direction of making an organised effort to improve the draught horses of the State. On the recommendation of Professor Lowrie, Director of Agriculture, the Government has decided to assist in instituting a scheme of encouraging farmers and others to raise the standard of their draughts by establishing horse-breeding societies on somewhat similar lines to those of Scotland, and the horse improvement scheme instituted last year by the British Government. The societies will be liberally subsidised by the State, and care taken to secure the services of really good typical sires. The formation of such societies should stimulate horsebreeding very decidedly (says an Australian writer), and the quality of the draught stock will be improved as successive generations of mares come to the stud. The scheme does not aim at reducing the fees to be paid by the< owners of mares. One object is that-the subsidy should be made the means of increasing inducements to breeders to introduce first-class sires from Scotland or New Zealand by augmenting the tees to be earned by a good horse. Professor Lowrie thinks it likely that, as enthusiasm and the spirit of emulation among the societies grew, as has occurred in Scotland, that some of them, when they failed fo secure for the premium they could offer horses of the desired breeding and quality in the State, would be enterprising enough to send delegates to the eastern States or to New Zealand to secure horses up to their own aim for the season. Professor Lowrie says: “We have to confess that our draught horses do not compare in general average quality with the horses in New Zealand, or even in Victoria, and there is good reason to urge that an improvement in quality is much to be desired as well as an increase in the numbers bred. Too large a proportion of the farmers now breeding a few foals a year, through carelessness or ignorance, use poor quality draught sires, mongrel roadsters, or weedy thoroughbreds, because they can hire the service cheaply, failing to realise what will be the difference in value at three years o'd, given care and judgment in rearing, between the colt by a typical sire and that by a mongrel. The breeder’s oxiom —the best pay best —is overlooked.”