HORSE BREEDING.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2224, 9 October 1886, Page 3

HORSE BREEDING.

TO THE EDirOB. Sib, — As one who takes a great interest in horse breeding, and wlio has seen a good deal of it in several part* of the world, perhaps you will peunit me to make a few remarks on the subject of breeding light legged horses in the Waik.ito. Your correspondent who describes the horse parade at Ohcvupo the other d.iy, seems to think that the ie>son for our producing &o few decent hack-, in the Waikato ib to be found in the fact that the thoroughbred sires that serve here are lacking in bone, and says that we want " horse*- like old Musket, big enough almost to take the sie'e of a plough." To this I say, certainly we want the biggest boned thoroughbreds that we can get, but 1 would point out the fact that thoronglioreds of Musket's .stamp are rare anywhero. Farmers at home do not get that btanip cf horse at fanner's prices My opinion (and in this I think that any one who has been anything of hor&e breeding at home will, on thinking the matter over, be likely to beat me out) is that the blood sires we have had in use in Waikato foi the last five or bix yeais are of a class distinctly better foi hack getting purposes than the average English farmer breeds from. Yet there i& no question that the English farmer rears better stock ; he undoubtedly produces a good number of brutes, but he doesn't have to breed something like fifty shapeless weeds to one decent hoise, which is about our Waikato proportion. The reason for the superiority of the English stock I will endeavour to show later on. As to the stallions, there are many grand horses for hack and hunter getting purposes standing at various places all over England at horn £10 to £lo ; but these are not what the average English farmer uses, he hasn't time to send his mares away, and doesn't like to pay so high a fee, so he uses a horse that is travelled at from £3 to £4. These horses are generally broken down weedy brutes that never ought to be bred from at all, and about whom the most wonderful thing ia, not that they get a lot of worthless stock, but that they somehow or other manage to get so many passably good ones among the bad ones. Such horses as Cap-a-pie, Rand wick, Ariel, Anteros, Feve, Ingomar and Both well are all of them, far away better horses than any that I can call to mind travelling in the southern and south eastern counties of England some fourteen or fifteen years ago, at the time I was there. In my experience of the last half dozen seasons in Waikato, I know of but one horse "Fisherman," that has travelled here, which I fehould put down as a really bad brute likely to damage the stock of any district he might travel in. Every one of the rest, though of course they have varied considerably in degree of excellence, has been a fairly good horse, and such as might be expected, when properly mated, to get sound, useful stock. Your correspondent says that it is not fair to put all the blame of our want of success in producing good stock on the mares. Certainly not. I would put it this way. I think we have nothing to grumble at in the sires ; something no doubt in the mares ; some are bred from that never should breed, others are wrongly irated ; but to my mind three • fourths of the blame lies not in the parents at all but in the way we rear the young stock. We breed a colt, wean him just before winter, and turn him out on to a bare swamp, or some such lively place, to shiver and starve through the winter, and reach the spring with nothing big about him but his belly, then because, after this magnificent start in life, he grows up scraggy and wanting in substance we blame the horse that got him. The best horses in the world can only get weeds under the same circumstances. Young horses can't be expected to grow without food or shelter, more especially during their first winter. If they get a shed to run into and a bite of oaten hay during their first winter they will not check in growth while running out during their subsequent winters if kept on reasonably good grass, though in many instances they would pay for feeding every winter. The better bred a colt is the more he needs a bit of early forcing. I have no desire to cry down a horse of Stonewall Jackson's type, and have no doubt at all that there are many mares among us which he will suit well, but I do not at all agree with your correspondent •'Waikato " that it would pay three men to use a horse like this where it would pay one to use a thoroughbred. There is no sire like a thoroughbred for all saddle purposes, cavalry included, unless it be a really good Arab, and that we haven't- got, and are not likely to get. We havo two capital blood sires this season. Ingomar is about as likely a horse as the Stud Company have yet sent us, and Bothwell is not far behind him, and I honestly believe that if breeders will only shove a little more grub into the foald when they come they will have no cause to complain of these horses not getting sufficient bone.— l am, juursfaitWuUv, W^ |