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.

Chapter XII.
Great Australian Horses.
The Barb v. Carbine.

For we did produce, once upon a time, animals fit to take their places in the ranks against the greatest that the world could bring. Although the Hon. James White failed in his patriotic invasion, many individual racers reached the shores of Great Britain and showed the racing world what we are really capable of.

To begin with, there was Merman. This horse was bred by Mr. W. R. Wilson when his St. Albans Stud was in the zenith of its fortunes. He was a chestnut colt, foaled in 1892, by Grand Flaneur, who, great horse as he himself was, was not an unqualified success at the stud, from Seaweed, by Coltness out of Surf (imported). He showed some fair form in Australia, winning a couple of two-year-old handicaps in his first season out of half a dozen starts; the July Handicap, at a mile, in nine attempts as a three-year-old, and the Armadale Handicap, one mile, the Rosstown Plate, 5½ furlongs, the Yan Yean Stakes, a mile, and the Williamstown Cup, one mile and three furlongs, out of seven efforts, as a four-year-old. That erudite judge, Mr. William Allison, then purchased him on behalf of Mrs. Langtry, and in England he proved himself a stayer of the very first water by winning the Ascot Gold Cup, 2¼ miles, the Cesarewitch, 2¼ miles, the Goodwood Cup and the Goodwood Stakes at two and a half miles each. This was the highest form imaginable, and was an excellent advertisement for the Australian horse.

Newhaven, our Cup and Derby winner, won the City and Suburban Handicap at Epsom, a race which the fiddle-headed old gelding, The Grafter, also appropriated, while Maluma, the sister to Malvolio, won races. Aurum, a son of Trenton, was, without doubt, the best representative we ever sent to the Old Country, but, unfortunately, he went wrong and never had a chance. He was the greatest three-year-old I ever saw, and at three years old ran third to The Grafter and Gaulus in the Melbourne Cup, two miles, at the beginning of November. This was such a good performance that I must append the weights, so that you can thoroughly appreciate the magnitude of the effort:—

Gaulus, 6 years7.8 (1)
The Grafter, 4 years7.0 (2)
Aurum, 3 years8.6 (3)

Had they been meeting at weight-for-age, their respective imposts would have been:—

Gaulus, ch. h., 6 yrs.9.6.
The Grafter, b. g., 4 yrs.8.11.
Aurum, br. c., 3 yrs.7.6.