A MODE OF BREAKING WILD HORSES, VERY DIFFERENT FROM THAT DISCOVERED BY ME.
I have seen a wild horse taken and shut up in a stable. The man who was to gentle or tame him, took a whip, such as a coachman uses, and went in to him; and, as the horse was frightened, and ran away from him, he fell to whipping him most unmercifully. At the end of half an hour, the horse, seeing it impossible to escape the whip by running away, advanced towards the man who had been his persecutor. The man threw down his whip, and began to handle him; but the horse, at the end of a few minutes, began to be refractory, when he took it up again, and repeated the lesson with so much severity, that the horse soon came back to him. This he continued for some time; when, at the end of about two hours, he saddled the horse and drove him about with his whip, making him come up to him every now and then, till at last he mounted him and rode off very well. I observed, that the horse frequently trembled, when he went to get on him, notwithstanding he rode him off pretty well; he appeared to be afraid of many objects he met with, and was far, very far from being that gentle, docile animal, tamed by the simple, natural means made use of in my method of breaking horses. Besides this, those horses do not remain gentle. I speak from experience.
ANOTHER MODE OF BREAKING A HORSE FOR A FEW HOURS.
Stop up the horse’s ears, so that he cannot hear at all, and you can very soon handle him as if he were a gentle horse; but, when you unstop his ears, he will become as wild as ever. If you perform this two or three times upon the same horse, it will have no effect upon him at last.
ADVICE TO FARMERS, CONCERNING THE GENTLING OF YOUNG COWS.
Though I did not intend to say any thing about horned cattle, it may not, perhaps, be amiss to relate what I have experienced and been eye-witness to, in the state of Louisiana, concerning the gentling of young cows, since I discovered the secret of breaking horses in a few hours. Whenever I have had a heifer or young cow to gentle, (it must be observed, that they are much wilder here than in the northern states,) I have made it a practice to have them tied by the horns to a post, and have made a servant begin to handle them well all over, speaking to them uninterruptedly; and this he did for two or three mornings, before milking them, always finishing by giving them a little salt. At the end of three or four days, they never failed of becoming gentle, and could be milked without being tied. Though I have seen by experience, that horned cattle, especially bulls, are much less sensible to the touch than horses, a part of which may possibly be owing to the thickness of their skin, yet even with them I have done much. Let any one who will, do more.