Chapter XI.. How to Breed an Australian Horse.

How to Breed an Australian Horse.

It is a well-known fact all the world over that every country must, perforce, keep on renewing its blood stock supply from the British Isles, but we in Australia have, to quote a modern expressive piece of slang, “gone over the odds” altogether. We are breeding, as we have seen in the previous chapter, scarcely any sires at all. This, somehow seems to be wrong. Australia contains magnificent country, and portions of it are blessed with a climate which is ideal for the purpose of breeding and rearing horseflesh. The conditions which we possess here, and which I designate as ideal are the following: We have still land procurable at not too extravagant a price. We can obtain it in comparatively large areas. The soil is suitable, in many localities, for the purpose. The climate is excellent. With these advantages at our doors, there are three methods of raising racehorses. The first is, whilst using very large areas of country, to leave everything to Nature. Reverse Cato’s maxim, “Laudito ingentia rura. Exiguum colito” (“Praise up big areas. Use small ones”). Whilst pursuing this method, the horse owner must make up his mind that he is unlikely to win two-year-old races, and therefore he must have no intention of breeding horses for the annual yearling sales. What he rears must be for his own use, and he must be exceedingly patient. I do not know anyone who follows the business on these lines, but the man who could afford to wait, and was willing to wait, would probably find himself, in a few years, the owner of several weight-for-age, sound-limbed, sound-jointed, clear-winded racers.

The second plan is to have a run of only a limited acreage, and to force the youngsters from the moment they are dropped.

And the third method is a combination of the two. To follow ideal lines, I think the following points are essential to insure the greatest amount of success which it is possible for sinful man to attain:—

Firstly: A sufficient area of suitable land. The locality is immaterial provided that there is an abundance of feed in favourable seasons, and plenty of limestone in the soil. I should have no enclosure, apart from yards, under a hundred acres, and the fencing, which is an expensive item these days, must be of post and rails. The contour of the ground should vary, and the soil must not be too rich. Hill and dale, upland and meadow, river flats, an occasional swamp, are each of them desirable commodities in the way of land, to be made use of in due season. The feet of the youngsters are fashioned by the country they run on. One of the most knowledgeable of all Australian trainers, a breeder himself, Mr. Joe Burton, it was who first impressed this fact upon my mind. Some readers may remember what a number of Gozo horses suffered from bad feet. “They are not Gozo feet,” Mr. Burton used to tell me; “they are Tucka Tucka feet.” I believe he was perfectly right.

Horses require frequent change. After a while they may be doing badly in a paddock showing a rare sward of grass, but will suddenly make gigantic strides in growth and welfare when shifted to a worse pasture. They do not appreciate rough, coarse, over-grown grasses. Therefore, bullocks must be used to keep the exuberance of a bountiful nature in rigid check. Their pasturage must be kept clean from the soiling of their own droppings. Chain and brush harrows break this up well, and scatter it over the soil, but unrotted horse manure puts very little back to the earth that has been taken out, and to seek the pitch of perfection the droppings should all be raked together and carted away to a receptacle where it can rot and be used for the garden or the cultivated fields.

Sheep and horses are like oil and water. They will not mix. You may run your mobs with sheep even amidst abundance, and yet they will be poverty stricken, covered with lice and ticks, unwholesome, and never “growthy.” So much shortly, then, for the land.

Secondly, Shelter: In the Old Country, where housing must be resorted to for a very great portion of the year, this is really not so important as in Australia. “The cold winds of winter blow mournfully here,” as the song says, and these are searching beyond belief in Australia. Every paddock must have efficient shelters. Plantations, close-growing hedges, clumps of native pines, groups of box or gum trees, are essentials for the well-being of all horses. The hedges and pines make excellent wind breaks, but shade from the sun in summer is equally a necessity. I like open sheds, thickly thatched, no corrugated iron, please, fairly high in the roof, and far removed from trees. Horses cannot stand the noise of wind-swung boughs on roofing. They, as a rule, believe in ghosts. The flies are a terrible infliction in the spring and early summer. I should like to house my young ones, during the worst months, in dark, but sweet, stables throughout the long, scorching summer days, and turn them out in the paddocks during the grateful coolness of the nights.

Thirdly, Artificial Feeding: In the average seasons mares carrying their foals require nothing in the way of artificial food, when once the winter has passed away. The grass supplies them with an abundance of good milk, and their offspring are the better for their natural sustenance, unaffected by overstimulating oats and chaff. Besides, some matrons have a tendency to wax over gross, and when this occurs, it is astonishing to see how little milk they manage to manufacture for their foal. During the spring and early summer, and whilst the grass seeds are still present in abundance, I believe that artificial food is thrown away. But each mare and foal should be watched as a cat watches a mouse. Neither must be suffered to endure the slightest check for a single day—no, not for one hour. The careful, experienced horse master can tell at a glance as soon as one of his charges is showing the smallest symptom of “going back,” and he must begin feeding instantly. If he has not postponed too long, it is surprising how little it takes in the way of oats and chaff and bran to keep your mares and foals in the best order imaginable. A few handfuls of good, sweet, oaten chaff, a couple of pints of coarse bran, always moistened, a pint or two of well-crushed oats, will be found more than a sufficiency until well into the autumn. But see that every mare and foal receives what you have apportioned them. I fall out with many of my friends in this item of stud management. Most people feed their mares together, perhaps in a number of different mangers, but yet not separated one from the other. I maintain that this is wrong. You cannot tell what each receives, and their appetite varies to a wonderful degree. I say that you should yard your mares and foals, and stall each of them within the yard, with their own separate manger, until the mob have finished their meal. Twice a day is quite enough, but feed as early in the morning as possible, and not too late in the afternoon.

In the winter the oats and chaff are increased, perhaps to five pints of oats for each mare and foal, a kerosene tinful of chaff, and three or four pints of bran. That is on an average, but we know that some will take more, and a few less. In the really cold weather, a couple of double handfuls of boiled barley, night and morning, is not only very pleasant, but it is a capital supplier of “caloric,” and the appetite is sharpened by the addition of a handful of brown sugar. In the cold, frosty nights, or still more so in the wet, windy ones of winter, mares and foals need something extra in the way of heat producers. The mares, if past the first blush of their youth, should be rugged. I have heard some stud masters decry boiled barley as anathema. I would agree with them if they fed their stock upon such a food, and used nothing else. But as an adjunct to their habitual oats and chaff and bran, it is magnificent. You cannot have too much change, and anything is wholesome for them, in well-regulated quantities, which horses will readily eat. We are careless of details in Australia, and only a few studs are worked by the owner in person. And it is the personal attention to minutiæ which is the main factor in winning success. There is no industry in the world in which loving care does so much good, in which carelessness and indifference so quickly spell ruin.

You may have a hundred stud grooms ere you drop onto the individual who has knowledge, honesty, industry and enthusiasm combined. Therefore, there are only a very few stud farms which are managed as they should be. And one of the most flagrant of faults in management is this: Let us imagine that you have decided upon sending your best couple of mares to a certain horse, away from home. Theoretically his blood suits that which flows in a purple stream through the veins of your mares. Both mares are in foal, and you truck them, and, perhaps, accompany them yourself, to the desired haven and harem some two hundred miles away. They are in rare condition. You hear by letter that they are safely over their foaling, and before the new year they are returned home. They arrive in miserable condition. The season has not been a very good one. They have not been fed. They have fallen away to shadows. Being good mothers, they have given of their substance to their foals until they have nothing more to give. Their ribs are sticking through their skin. Their coat is dry and rusty, and emits a disagreeable smell. The foal is in no better case. He looks wretched. Mare and foal, and the embryo in utero, have received such a check that they will never make up the ground they have lost. It is a handicap on their backs for the rest of their lives. So you have practically lost two seasons with your two best mares, and have paid a couple of hundred guineas for the experience. I have a grievance against very many stallion masters over this bone which I am endeavouring to pick with them, and I bring it forward here in an earnest endeavour to draw the attention of owners to the matter. Many of them are unaware of the facts of the case, and the sooner they learn them the better. In this ideal country of ours we ought to be able to breed the best racehorses in the whole wide world, and we should certainly be able to rear our own sires, with the assistance of occasional infusions of English blood. Search the columns of the weekly sporting press and scan the advertisements of “Sires of the Season.” In one paper I see close on eighty blood stallions advertised. With the exception of about half a dozen these are all imported. In another publication there are seventy, and the same proportion of country breeds stands to the imported stuff. And yet, what strains we have owned in the days that have gone by! Sound, stout, masculine, running strains. But they have run out, and they are vanished away. And it must be confessed with the deepest regret that a great number of the army of blood sires which we have been importing for the last twenty years are not sound, are not stout, are the reverse of masculine, although they do possess some of the greatest running blood in all the earth. My own deliberate opinion is that, for a decade, at least, we should drop this extravagant importation, put our own house in better order, and show the world once more what we can do in the way of producing our own sound, stout, fleet and staying, high-couraged but sensible Australian horse.