The Principles Of Horse Breeding

No one who is at all acquainted with the history of breeding in New England and the country at large — at least, so far as trotting-horses are concerned — can deny that much money has been lost, and many failures made, by those who have embarked their property in the enterprise. The fast horses of the country seem to be rather the result of accident or good fortune than of design. In other business, men invest one or five thousand dollars with the reasonable certainty that they will receive their money back again, together with a profitable rate of interest. This is what is called doing a safe business ; and it is this certainty of return that renders the business legitimate. By as much as the result is uncertain, accidental, the business loses in dignity, ceases to be attractive to a well-constructed intellect, and becomes a species of gambling. Now, breeding of fast horses has been a business, up to within a few years, and even now, in the majority of cases, is a pursuit, notoriously tainted with this fatal element of uncertainty. The history of almost every breeder is a history of extravagant hopes and bitter disappointments. His whole career has been one of struggle, delusive successes, and total failures. If now and then he has made a "hit" as the saying is, if occasionally he has produced a fast colt, the very success served only, in the way of contrast, to make his failures all the more noticeable. The great trotting-horses of the country have not been foaled, in the proportion that one might reasonably expect, in the great stables of the country : they have come, rather, before the public from obscure sources.

In many cases, as with Dutchman and Flora Temple and Ripton, no one can tell up to this day any thing of the sire or the dam. The fact that three such horses, and scores of others of almost equal merit, have no known parentage, reveals how rude and unsuccessful the breeding efforts of the country have been. Who can conceive of three winners of the Derby with no known pedigree ? Who can imagine a horse arising in England, who should win all the principal prizes, and remain king of the English turf for six or ten years, and no Englishman be able to tell the stable in which he was born, the dam that foaled him, or the horse which was his sire ? Such a thing would be impossible : for there the principles of breeding are understood ; the result that shall come from the union of two strains of blood can be predicted ; and successes are in the line of sequence, and not of accident. But here we have had few, if any, impartial and intelligent students of the problem. The most intricate and delicate of all endeavors to propagate great excellences by the harmonious union of desirable qualities, possessed in part by the sire and in part by the dam, has been, for the most part, undertaken by men too ignorant or prejudiced to grasp comprehensively the rudimental principles of success. Hence it is that breeding in America has been an innocent kind of gambling ; that is, a venture in which good luck, rather than an understanding of and attention to the business, was relied on for success. Hence many of our fastest horses are sent to us annually from the barn-yards of unknown, and, so far as principles of breeding go, ignorant farmers. We find them — as Dutchman was found, in a tandem-team, drawing bricks ; or behind a drover's wagon, as Flora Temple was discovered — without name or fame. They come unheralded by any expectation, the result of no plan, no knowledge, no wisely-invested capital. This seems an indisputable proposition, therefore, — that one of the causes of the financial failures which have attended attempts at breeding is to be found in the gross ignorance of the breeders themselves in the principles of propagation. This is the more to be wondered at, because, in all kindred branches, knowledge is universally admitted to be the great essential of success. No one, for instance, will invest money in trout-culture until he has examined into the principles which underlie their propagation.

He becomes a student of trout ; studies their structure and habits, their favourite diet, and the treatment which is most favorable to their rapid increase and growth. All this is preliminary to the grand undertaking. He invests no money, he makes not a move, until the knowledge of the business necessary to the proper understanding of it is obtained. So is it in the case of fowl, sheep, and the like. Knowledge first, investment of money next, is the rule and order. It is just this rule and order that men seem to reverse in their attempts at breeding the horse. With no knowledge of what is needed in the sire or the dam ; with no power to discriminate the qualities of either ; with no ability to say that these qualities are such as to warrant harmonious union of all that is most desirable in either parent, — in the foal, or the reverse, — they breed, not along the line of certain well-ascertained principles or clearly-discerned similitudes, but haphazardly, as chance furnishes the opportunity, trusting to luck to produce a fast colt. The grossness of this blunder can only be apprehended and realized when you consider that the breeding of fast horses is not only a business, but a business the principles of success in which are most delicate and hidden. The man who engages in it not only undertakes to deal with the outward and material, but more yet with the inward and the spiritual. The problem is the propagation of a high order of life ; and not only its propagation, but its propagation in such a form and spirit, that its expression shall be marked with certain specific characteristics. The breeder must be, in the most thorough and elevated sense of the word, a student. His capital is his power to observe and infer. From what is seen, he reasons to what is unseen ; from that which is, to that which shall be. His study is the study of nervous forces, — their origin, and law of descent-; of muscular power, — its source, how accumulated, and how sustained. Nor is this all. He is a student of an organization of so high and fine a quality, that its condition, and states of temperament, are as variable as the wind. The horse is an animal of exquisite construction. In him we behold one of the finest results of creative skill. In nervous structure he is exceedingly sensitive. Sensitive and sympathetic, he suffers from those changes in condition and treatment to which other animals are indifferent.

Even so slight causes as changes in his food and bedding, interruption and difference in grooming, ay, even the subtle changes of the atmosphere, affect him. Nor is it alone the horse before him that he must study. To know a man, you must know something of his ancestry. Man is not a simple, he is a complex, being. He is the result of many antedating causes. He is the embodiment of both harmonious and antagonistic forces. Five generations are represented in him. He is the child of ten parents; and each parent positively or negatively exists in him. So it is with the horse. He is the result of antedating causes. Sire, grandsire, and a long line of ancestry, — with all their peculiarities of spirit and structure, of like and unlike qualities, of elements harmonious and antagonistic, — are represented in him. To study him is to study them. To know him is to know them. You must gauge the force that is not before you can gauge the force that is. History must assist observation, and reading be joined to sight. Is it extravagant, then, for me to ask, What higher study can there be than this, — this study into life muscular and nervous, mental and emotional ? What nobler subject than this, — the investigation of those laws by which life, in all its changes and gradations, is transmitted from sire to son ? What more difficult problem than this, the solution of which should reveal to us the forceful properties which repeat themselves in animal as well as human life, and which may, therefore, be regarded as truly representative of that order of existence with which we behold them associated ? And yet men have expected, without knowledge or study, or facilities whereby to conduct the business advantageously, to make great fortunes out of breeding ; and people can be found all over New England and the country who will question the profitableness of breeding fine horses, on the ground that many of those who have attempted it have not been successful ; failing to see, or else purposely ignoring the fact, that the reason why these gentlemen have failed to achieve success in their efforts is because their efforts were not directed by a sufficient intelligence in respect to the business they had undertaken. Now, the writer firmly believes that breeding of handsome and fast trotting-horses in America is, and will continue to be, a most profitable business. He believes it will yield for the money invested a larger return by twenty per cent than any other branch of agriculture ; and he believes that this is especially true in the New-England States. The fact is, agriculture proper — by which I mean the tillage of the soil, and the production of those products that grow directly out of the soil — can no longer be relied upon to keep alive the .agricultural spirit, or sustain the agricultural wealth, of New England. We cannot compete successfully with the Middle States and the Great West in the raising of cereals, or, indeed, in the breeding of those animals whose market value can never rise beyond a certain moderate price, and to fit which for the market the products of their great wheat and corn fields are serviceable. Hence it comes about, that in swine and beeves, and the lower-price horses. New England can never compete with Ohio and Illinois, Wisconsin and Texas.

When horses of good serviceable quality for family and team use can be shipped from Michigan to Boston, and sold in our sale stables at a hundred and seventy -five dollars per head, no Massachusetts breeder can afford to raise colts of ordinary quality. So long as the cost of transporting a horse from the West to the seaboard is less than the difference of the cost of supporting him from the time he is foaled to the time he is ready for the market. New England cannot afford to breed low-priced animals. It is, therefore, only in raising such animals as are of fine quality that we of the Eastern States can find our reward. Here it is that we see another reason why breeders have been unsuccessful in their investments. They have bred on the level of too low an average to make it pay. The principle on which they acted, that low-priced stallions and dams could produce high-priced colts, is a false one. I wish the reader to observe, then, that, while I maintain that breeding can be made in New England to yield a liberal return for the money invested, it cannot be made to do this save when it is conducted with knowledge and understanding of those principles which insure success. In brief, it is like any other business : it can be conducted successfully only by those who understand it.