Horse-breeding: being the general principles of heredity applied to the business of breeding horses, with instructions for the management of stallions, brood mares and young foals, and selection of breeding stock

Table Of Contents

Preface 5

Chapter I

General Principles of Breeding.— General Laws of Heredity- Causes of Variation from Original Typos — Modifications from Changed Conditions of Life— Accidental Variations or " Sports "— Extent of Hereditary Inflaence— The Formation of Breeds— In-Breeding and Crossing— Value of Pedigree- Relative Size of Sire and Dam— Influenee of First Impregnation—Effect of Imagination on Color of Progeny— Effect of Change of Climate on the Generative Organs— Controlling the Sex 9

Chapter II

Breeds of Horses.— Thoroughbreds — Trotters and Roadsters — Orloffs or Russian Trotters— Cleveland Bays— Shire or Cart Horses— Clydesdales—Percherons-Otber Breeds (58

Chapter III

Stallions, Brood Mares and Foals.— Selection of Breeding- Stock— General Management of the StaUion— Controlling the Stallion When in Use— When Mares Should be Tried— The Number of Mares to be Served— Effect of Age on the Fertility of the Stallion— Effect of Age on the Quality of the Get- Percentage of Foals to Mares Served — Management of the Stallion After the Season Closes — Effects of Castration on Stallions — Fighting Between Stallions — The Brood Mare- Causes of Barrenness in Brood Mares— The Productive Period in Brood Mares— Time of Foaling and Period of Gestation- General Suggestions as to Food and Nursing— Feeding the Young Foal— Weaning the Foal— Effect of Exercise on Development—Breaking the Foal— Views of Dr. Reynolds,^ of Liverpool, on Horse-Breeding 131

4 CONTENTS.

Chapter IV

Diseases Peculiar to Breedikg-Stock.— Hygiene of the Eye— The Eye as Affected by the Teeth— Umbilical Hernia in Young Foals— "Scours" or Diarrhoea in Colts — Strangles or Distemper. The StaIiLION.- External Injuries— Inflammation

of the Penis— Inflammation of the Testicles— Cancer of the Penis and Sheath— Prolapse or Paralysis of the Penis— Scrotal Hernia— Waterbag, So-Called — Excessive Venery— Non-emission of Semen; "Proudness," So-Called— Sexual Sluggishness — Spermatorrhoea— Vesicular Eiaptions on the Penis — Foul Sheath— Masturbation— Cryptorchids (Ridglings, So-Called).

The Brood Mare.— Barrenness— Nymphomania Tumors

Within the Vagina and Uterus — Leucorrhoea, or So-Called Whites— Colt-Founder, So-Called— (Edema During Pregnancy — Superimpregnation — Heat During Pregnancy— Laceration of the Rectum- Abortion— Difficult Parturition— Laceration of the Perinseum 204

Preface

A very large proportion of the matter contained in this vohinie was prepared for publication several years ago when I had more leisure to study and write upon the topics herein considered, and when I was fre.^her from the field of practical experience than now. Much of it has since been printed in fragments at various times, some of it in the form of editorial articles for the monthly journal that was so long nnder my management, some in essays or addresses at meetings and conventions of breeders of live stock, and still other portions of it in the weekly stock-breeders' paper that for more than three years past has occupied my almost constant attention. A little more than four years ago I thought myself about ready to gather up the fragments that were already prepared and give them to the public in book form; but other and more pressing duties intervened, and it is only within a few months past, having been relieved from official duties that had for three years claimed all the time that I could possibly spare from the management of The Breeder's Gazette, that I have found leisure to look over and arrange the

6 PEEFACE.

matter which lias been gradually accumulating for so long a period. I give it now to the public, realizing that, in common with all human effort, it must needs be far from perfect, but with a feeling of satisfaction in knowing that the work has at least been conscientiously done; and that such parts of it as are not derived from a knowledge bought with my own personal experiences have, for their foundation, the teachings of others who are regarded as eminent authorities in the specialties upon which I have quoted them. To the introductory chapters, wherein the general principles of breeding are discussed, I have given much thought; and I am confident they may be studied with profit, not only by horse-breeders, but by all who are disposed to investigate the laws which govern the transmission of hereditary qualities from parent to offspring, whether it be in the human species or in the lower orders of animal life. In the descriptions of breeds I have endeavored to be judicially candid and fair; to ''nothing extenuate nor set down aught in malice;"' and where controverted points have been touched upon, Avhile I have endeavored to state my views plainly, and to sustain them by such arguments and facts as to my mind are conclusive, yet I have tried to do so in a manner that would not prove offensive to those whose opinions and conclusions may differ from my own.

Aside from the introductory chapters on the general principles of breeding, which are applicable alike

PKEFACE. 7

to all breeds and all varieties of live stock, I have endeavored to make the work a practical guide to the management of the breeding stud — a book which any farmer or farmer's boy, or any novice in the business of horse-breeding, may read and study with profit. In the course of my long experience as editor of a live-stock paper, covering a period of about sixteen years, the constantly recurring questions that have been seut in for answer have served to direct my attention especially to the points upon which information is most frequently sought, and these points I have endeavored to most fully answer in the pages which follow.

While I have not intended that this book should in any sense be regarded as a veterinary work, yet I have thought T might add greatly to its practical usefulness by incorporating witli it the material portions of several articles, prepared at my request, by Prof. James Law, of Cornell University, N. Y., and previously published under my direction, wherein he treats of some of the diseases to which stallions, brood mares and young foals are especially subject. And I have also added a number of pages of matter of a similar nature, prepared especially for this work by N. H. Paaren, M. D., State Veterinarian of Illinois, whose high scientific attainments and many years of extensive practice have especially fitted him to give valuable counsel upon such topics.

In the belief that the book will be found interesting to all students of the science and art of breed-

PREFACE.

ing, and especially helpful to those who have the care and management of breeding studs, whether on a large or small scale, it is given to the public with a full consciousness of the fact that it does not contain a tithe of Avhat might profitably be written or said u})()n the subject.

J. H. SANDER8.

Chicago. Feb. 1, 1885.

Chapter I. General Principles Of Breeding

It is stated in Holy Writ that "God made man a little lower than the angels," and by common consent the horse is voted next highest in the scale of created beings. It wiU not be inappropriate then, in a treatise mainly devoted to the breeding of this, the noblest of the brute creation, to discuss some of the general principles which govern the transmission of hereditary qualities from parent to offspring and Tv^hich are beyond a question substantially the same throughout animal life. Through the practical application of these laws to the business of breeding domestic animals, which for many years past has so largely occupied the attention of intelligent men in Europe and America, the great mass of our agricultural population have become familiar with their inexorable power and force ; and with a knowledge of the immutability of these laws has come a realization of the stern fact that the human species furnish no exception to their operation.

The passage in the Decalogue, which declares that the iniquities of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation, is clothed with a new and startling significance since it has come to be generally understood that this declaration is a concise statement of the operations of a physiological law, from which there is

10 A TREATISE ON HOESE-BKEEDING.

absolutely no escape. That the physical, as well as the mental and moral infirmities and peculiarities of the father and mother, are visited upon their children, even beyond the third and fourth generations, is as true when applied to the human family as it is of cattle, horses, sheep and swine.

It is not my purpose to attempt to controvert the principle that "all men are born free and equal," which stands as the corner-stone of our political system. Undoubtedly this is true when applied to " rights before the law," but that all men are born physically, morally and intellectually equal will scarcely be claimed by the most ardent admirer of our democratic institutions. There is a solid foundation, in physiological fact, for the admiration with which the "first families of Virginia" have been regarded in some parts of our country, and the same may be said of many of our old famines in New England and other parts of the country. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes makes his " Autocrat of the Breakfast Table " give utterance to his belief in this great truth and his faith in the value of pedigree in the human family when he says : "I go always, other things being equal, for the man who inherits family traditions and the cumulative humanities of at least four or five generations." To know that a man or woman is descended from an old family whose record has been honorable, beyond reproach and without taint, is the very best possible evidence, next to his own individual record, that he is also worthy of confidence and respect ; and a taint in the blood of an opposite character should certainly be regarded with as much distrust as a similar taint in the blood of any of our domestic animals, and for the same reasons. What is " bred in the bone" will be transmitted. Beauty of form and feature, strength and force of intellect, elegance and grace of motion, integrity and honesty of character, susceptibility

GENEEAIi PRINCIPLES OF BREEDING. 11

of culture and refinement or boorish stupidity, as well as all the virtues and vices, are as clearly transmissible and inheritable quahties in man as is the color of the hair or the shape of the body in horses or cattle.

A subject of such vast importance, involving as it does so much for weal or woe to the human race, and which places in the hands of the intelligent stock-breeder such power over the animal kingdom, may well command the attention of thinking men, aside from its practical value as an aid to an intelligent reproduction of desirable forms and qualities in our domestic animals. It has been said of Bakewell, one of the first great improvers of live stock in Great Britain, that he regarded the animals upon his farm as wax in his hands, out of which in good time he could mould any form that he desired to create. In fact all our domestic animals have been, to a great degree, moulded and fashioned by the hand of man. The same uniformity that now characterizes the bison, the elk and the deer probably belonged to the horse, the cow, the sheep and the hog, in a state of nature. The ponderous English Cart-horse, the fleet courser and the diminutive Shetland pony, are all supposed to have descended from originals that were as uniform in their characteristics as are the members of a herd of bison upon our western prairies. The Short-horn, the Hereford, the Devon, the Jersey and all of the various breeds into which our cattle are now divided, are descended, it is beUeved, from the same original type.

CAUSES OF VARIATION FROM OEIGINAIi TYPES.

That the changed conditions of Ufe to which animals have been subjected by domestication — the variety of uses to which they have been put, the food upon which they have subsisted, the climate in which they have been reared, and

12 A TKEATISE ON HORSE-BREEDING.

selection for especial uses — have produced the variations which are now so apparent, is generally admitted. Very much of this divergence is due to climatic influences, which alone are sufficiently powerful, in the changes of food and of habit which necessarily follow, to account for nearly all the varieties which have been produced. A warm climate and a bountiful supply of nutritious food from birth to maturity promotes groT^^h and development, while a scanty supply of nutrition and a rigorous climate have a positive tendency in the opposite direction. A knowledge of the effect of heat and cold upon growth and development has been taken advantage of by breeders for the purpose of producing dwarf specimens. The breeder of Bantam fowls is careful to have his chicks hatched late in the season, so that the early approach of cold weather may arrest development. The bleak, barren and tempestuous islands — lying in the high latitude of 59 and 60 deg.— north of Scotland, with their scanty subsistence and long winters, have dwarfed the horse of that country until he appears as the diminutive Shetland pony, while, from probably the same original, the rich herbage, nutritious grains and mild climate 10 deg. further south, on the European coast, has given us the immense draft-horses of ancient Normandy and Flanders.

But while climate and the necessarily accompanying influences have done much to cause the divergence which now exists in races that were once uniform, selection by the hand of man has also been actively at work, in some cases co-operating with the influences of climate, thereby accelerating the transformation, and in others counteracting its effect. We have an illustration of this in the horses of Canada. It is quite evident that the causes that have given us the tough, shaggy pony of Lower Canada, if continued without interruption for a succession of generations, and

GENEKAIi PEINCIPLES OF BKEEDING. 13

accelerated by the efforts of breeders in selecting animals for the purpose of reproduction, with the same object constantly in view, would in course of time give us a race as diminutive as the ponies of the Shetland Islands. But this climatic influence has been retarded and counteracted by Canadian breeders, who have rejected the smaller specimens for breeding purposes, and have constantly dra^vn upon the large draft breeds of Europe for fresh crosses. To such an extent has this infusion of fresh blood been carried for twenty-five years past, especially in Upper Canada or Ontario, that the influences of climate have been overpowered and the progression has been decidedly in the opposite direction. The efforts of Canadian breeders in this direction have been aided materially by the improved condition of agriculture in the Dominion, which has led to a more libej-al system of feeding and more thorough protection from the rigor of the cUmate. And thus the forces and influences of nature, in some cases aided and in others counteracted by the efforts of man, have constantly been at work breaking up the uniformity which originally characterized all our domestic animals, until divergence from the original type has become, in many instances, truly wonderful.

The influences of selection, in creating divergence from a type singularly uniform, finds a most striking illustration in the case of the domestic pigeon, of which there are now nearly 300 known varieties, more or less distinct, and all probably descended from the common wild rock pigeon. Among these varieties the divergence is remarkable, not only in the color of the plumage, which in the orignal is uniform, but in the shape and markings of the various parts. Who would imagine, at first thought, that the pouters, the carriers, the runts, the barbs, the fantails, the

14 A TKEATISE ON HOKSE-BKEEDlNG.

owls, the tumblers, the frill-backs, the jacobins, the trumpeters, etc., and all their sub-varieties, with differences so strongly marked, are descended from one common parent stock! Yet, that this is true, and that all the varieties from the original type have resulted from changed conditions of life, climatic influences and artificial selection and crossing, is generally admitted by naturalists.

It is one of the jjrinciples of heredity, that when there is a great uniformity in a species divergences from the usual type in the offspring are slight and rare; but when this uniformity, from no matter what cause, has been broken up, divergences in the offspring are frequent and great, although there is always present a tendency, more or less powerful, to revert to the original type. This tendency is most frequently manifested when breeds or races, widely differing in their present forms, are crossed upon each other. In such cases, or violent crosses as they are called, it frequently happens that the progeny resembles neither parent, but shows strong marks of the type from which both of its ancestors originally sprung. Darwin gives numerous illustrations of this tendency to reversion in his experiments with pigeons of various breeds and colors, one of which I quote, as follows:

I paired a mongrel female barb-fantail with a mongrel male barb-spot, neither of which mongrels had the least blue about them. Let it be remembered that blue barbs are excessively rare; that spots, as has been already stated, were perfectly characterized in the year 1G7G, and breed perfectly true; this likewise is the case with white f antails, so much so that I have never heard of white f antails throwing any other color. Nevertheless, the offspring from the above two mongrels were of exactly the same blue tint as that of the wild rock pigeon, from the Shetland Islands, over the whole back and wings; the double black wing bars were equally conspicuous; the tail was exactly alike in all its characters, and the croup was pure white; the head, however, was tinted with

GENEBAIi PKINCIPLES OF BEEEDING. 15

a shade of red, evidently derived from the spot, and was of a paler blue than in the rock pigeon, as was the stomach. So that two black barbs, a red spot and a white f antail, as the four purely-bred grandparents, produced a bird of the same general blue color, together with every characteristic mark, as in the wild Columba livia, or rock pigeon.*

This tendency to reversion in different breeds of domestic animals when crossed accounts for many of the disappointments which breeders experience in their efforts to improve their stock, and serves greatly to compHcate the breeding problem.

MODIFICATIONS PRODUCED BY CHANGED CONDITIONS OF LIFE.

It is quite certain, from what we know of the effect of climate and of changed habits upon animals in a state of domestication, that if two branches of the same tribe or species, essentially alike in every feature, should, by some chance, become separated and compelled to subsist under widely differing conditions of life, being left entirely to themselves and the operations of natural laws, in course of time a very marked difference would occur in their structure or habit. There is a tendency in all animal life to adapt itself to the conditions under which it must exist; but a change may be so abrupt and complete as to overcome this tendency; and, under such a condition, the race would speedily become extinct, or gradually die out with a few generations of sickly and enfeebled descendants; but, under circumstances less abrupt and unfavorable, a few might survive, being those individuals that, from some

* Those who have a desire to investigate this subject, as illustrated by the breeding of pigeons, will find a very full history of the various breeds, their processes of formation, and the effects of selection and crossing of breeds, in Darwin's "Variations of Animals and Plants under Domestication," Vol. I, pp. 163 to 272.

peculiarity of organization, suffered least from the change. These animals, in their turn, would reproduce the peculiarities of their race, modified, to some extent, by the new conditions which environed them; and these again would produce animals still better adapted to the new order, until, in course of time, we should have a race widely differing from the original type, created or evolved by a survival of those best fitted to exist under the new order of things, and remoulded and refashioned by the changed conditions of life.

If we accept the commonly-received doctrine of the origin of the human race — that is, that all mankind are descended from a common parentage — we are driven to the conclusion that all the differences which are so apparent in the human family at the present day are the result of the operation of the law of adaptation to changed conditions and of climatic influences, to which I have just referred. And yet there is as great a divergence from a uniform type in the human race as in any of the lower orders of animals that are recognized as belonging to a single species.

An illustration of this law of adaptation may be found in the cattle of Texas. These animals, which we call " native Texans," are undoubtedly descended from the Spanish cattle, brought at a very early day to Louisiana and Mexico, but in form and habit they have been greatly changed from their Spanish ancestry. They roam over the plains of Texas, eat its grasses and drink its waters with impunity, and, under these conditions, increase and multiply at a prodigious rate, enjoying a remarkable degree of immunity from disease of any kind. But let the cattle of any other region be taken to that State and serious losses result from what is commonly known as Texas fever. It is not my intention, at this time, to go into an account of the nature or

GENEKAIi PEINCIPLES OF BEEEDING. 17

cause of this disease ; it is sufficient for my purpose to state the simple and well-known fact that all attempts at the introduction of a new race of cattle upon the plains of Texas have been attended with very serious losses. The proportion that have been found able to survive, under the conditions to which they are there subjected, has been found to be so small that few breeders or herdsmen will take the risk of bringing valuable cattle into the State. And yet a few do survive ; and their descendants are as frea from liability to the disease as are the native Texan s themselves. The Spanish cattle, when first brought to thai: region, undoubtedly had to submit to the same fatal ordeal, and the thousands upon thousands of their descendants which today are found in that State afford us a striking illustration of the ability of a race to adapt itself to conditions which at first threatened it with extinction. The silent and invisible processes of nature so change the system and adapt it to the new order of things that what was a deadly poison to the ancestor is comparatively harmless to the progeny.

I might multiply illustrations of a like character, from the human race as well as from the lower orders of animals, but the principle is so well known and so universally recognized that it is useless to discuss it farther ; and I have only alluded to it here as tending to show how numerous and powerful are the agencies that are constantly at work producing variations and changes in animal life.

In the practical business of breeding domestic animals it is important that due prominence be given to the operation of the laws to which I have alluded ; for it follows that a race or breed most perfectly adapted to a certain locality, a certain mode of life, conditions of climate, and character of subsistence, may, in time, when transported to a distant clime, or even when subjected to changed conditions of life in the same locality, lose all its distinguishing characteristics and become practically worthless. On the other hand, a race of but little value in its native state may be so modified by a change in cHmatic conditions, or by the character, quahty and quantity of the ahment furnished, as to become of the highest value to the breeder ; and these modifications, although frequently so slow as to be almost imperceptible in a single generation, are accelerated by the powers of inheritance under a continuation of the conditions which inaugurated them. A high or low temperature, and abundant or scanty nutrition, will, as before stated, affect physical development either favorably or unfavorably. Elevated plains, low marshes, and mountain ranges are each adapted to support a species of animal life in some respects distinct from the others ; and hence a knowledge of the effect of the various climatic conditions, and of the different kinds of food, becomes of the utmost importance to the breeder in determining the kinds of stock that he can produce with profit.

There is perhaps no variety of animals that has been domesticated by man in which the effects of chmate and nutrition are more apparent than in horses. Temperate regions, grassy plains, and, consequently, abundant nutrition, produce increased size and strength; mountain ranges, with bleak, cold climate and scanty subsistence, dwarf the frame and produce the hardy, diminutive pony. The fertile plains of Germany and Flanders, with their salubrious chmate and abundant herbage, have been the home, from the very earliest period of history, of the ponderous draft-horses which still distinguish that region, and have been the source from which all the countries of the world have drawn the foundation for their draft breeds. The bleak and barren Shetland Islands, and the mountainous tract

GlENEEAIi PEINCIPLES OF BREEDING. 19

which lies between the plains of India and the crest of the great Himalaya range, are the homes of races of diminutive ponies, rough, shaggy and hardy. The highest inhabited land of Asia, which forms the source of the Ganges, the Indus and the Brahmapootra — a country as rugged and bleak as can well be conceived — contains immense numbers of small, sinewy and agile horses. The extreme regions bounded by the mountains of Siberia on the north, the Sea of Okhotsk on the east, and the Little Altaic Mountains on the west — the home of the Kalmucks — abounds in a tough and hardy race of ponies.

I have not been able to find an exception to this law of nature in the history of the world. Wherever the horse has existed for centuries on rich, fertile plains, and in a temperate climate, we find him distinguished for size and strength; wherever he has been the inhabitant of inhospitable, mountainous regions he becomes diminutive and hardy. Of course these results have obtained where the horse is left largely to take care of himself. Man may do much by supplying warm stables and abundant food, and by selection, to counteract the influence of climate, but in spite of his utmost care the tendency will constantly be as nature has pointed out. Mountainous regions and a rigorous climate will produce the toughest, hardiest horses — as we have seen in the New England Morgans and the Canadian ponies of our own country — while our rich and fertile prairies and luxuriant valleys are adapted by nature to be the home of the ponderous draft-horse.

Prof. Low, in his great work, " The Domesticated Animals of the British Islands," has a very interesting chapter on the effect of climatic influences upon animal life, from which I quote the following :

The effect of heat is everywhere observed, as it modifies the secretions which give color to the skin, and the degree of covering provided for the protection of the body, whether wool or hair. In the case of the human species the effects of temperature on the color of the skin, and, with this, on the color of the eyes and hair, are sufficiently known. AVe can not pass from the colder parts of Europe to the warmer without marking the progressive diversities of color, from the light complexion of the northern nations to the swarthy tinge of the Spaniards, Italians and Greeks; and when we have crossed the Mediterranean into Africa the dark color, which is proper to all the warmer regions of the globe, everywhere meets the eye. The Jews, naturally as fair as the other inhabitants of Syria, become gradually darker as they have been for a longer or shorter time acclimated in the warmer countries; and in the plains of the Ganges they are as dark as Hindoos. The Portuguese, who have been naturalized in the African colonies of their nation, have become entirely black. If we suppose, indeed, the great races of mankind to have been called into existence in different regions we must suppose that they were born with the color, as well as the other attributes, suited to the climates of the countries which they were to inhabit. It accords with this supposition that the Negro remains always black, even in the highest latitudes to which he has been carried; and that the black races of the Eastern Islands retain the color proper to them in the mild temperature of Van Diemen's Land. The Mongolian, even in the coldest regions of Northern Asia, retains the hue distinctive of his family, but with a continually deepening shade as he approaches to the intertropical countries. The native of China, of a dull yellow tint at Pekin, is at Canton nearly as dark as a Lascar. The American Indian retains his distinctive copper hue amid the snows of Labrador, but on the shores of the Caribbean Sea becomes nearly as black as an African.

Temperature likewise affects the size and form of the body. The members of the Caucasian group towards the Arctic Circle are of far inferior bulk of body to the natives of temperate countries. The Central Asiatics, in elevated plains, are sturdy and short, the result of an expansion of the chest; the Hindoos are of slender form and low physical powers, so that they have almost always yielded to the superior force of the northern nations from the first invasion of the Macedonians to the ultimate establish-