Davy Crockett.
Pat Cleburne, by Benton’s Gray Diomed.
This wide inclusion is hospitable and probably just, for the blood of all these horses commingling with the old stock has made the Kentucky saddle-horses what they are, but among them all the Denmarks are pre-eminent. That they should be a reproducing type is, no doubt, due to the Oriental blood in the Thoroughbreds and the fresh infusions that came with the Jefferson Barbs, Keene Richards’s Arabs and from other more recent sources.
HIGHLAND EAGLE (A CLOSELY INBRED DENMARK BY HIGHLAND DENMARK)
Owned by Thomas K. Ryan
CHAPTER NINE
THE GOVERNMENT AS A BREEDER
The United States as a government has never until now conducted any horse-breeding experiments. Army officers have frequently tried to induce the War Department to start a breeding establishment so that remounts of a proper kind could be supplied to the cavalry. But the idea has never appealed to Congress, and in this particular direction nothing has been done. Dr. D. E. Salmon, the accomplished chief of the Bureau of Animal Industry of the Agricultural Department, has inserted what may be the “entering-wedge” for at the Colorado Agricultural Experiment Station a few mares and stallions have been assembled, and an effort will be made to breed a type of carriage horses, a type badly needed. Of this experiment Dr. Salmon says:
“In the countries of the world where horse breeding has been encouraged by government assistance the foundation has been native stock, and the key to successful work has been selection according to a certain type. Furthermore, with all due respect to Godolphin Arabian, the Darley Arabian and their contemporaries, the great factor in developing the Thoroughbred horse was the method of the English breeder, and more credit is due to native English stock and to environment than has generally been acknowledged. The Thoroughbred has been the great leavening power in developing English breeds of light horses; the trotter may bear the same relation to the horse stock of America.
“The trotter is found throughout the country wherever horses are raised, and any improvement in this breed affects in time the entire horse industry. The light harness classes can be supplied from this source, and there is no more effective way to provide a supply of suitable cavalry horses for the United States army than by showing how the native horse may be improved.
“That the trotter has faults no one will deny, and that the speed idea has been responsible for many of these faults and has caused many a man to become bankrupt are equally certain. If a horse can trot 2.10 or better it is reasonably certain that he will make money for his owner, and it matters not how homely or unsound he may be; but if the horse has bad looks and unsoundness, and also lacks speed, he will be unprofitable on the track, and can not be sold at a profitable price on the market, while, if used in the stud, his undesirable qualities are perpetuated. On the other hand, if the horse has a moderate speed, but is sound, handsome and stylish, with a shapely head and neck, a straight, strong back, straight croup, muscular quarters and stifles, well-set legs, possesses good all-round true action and has abundant endurance, he is almost certainly a profitable investment. This is the kind of light horse which the market wants and will pay for. If of the roadster type, he sells well as a driver; if more on the heavy harness order, as a carriage horse.