ENGLISH HORSE BREEDING DECLINE

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1628, 13 May 1903, Page 62

ENGLISH HORSE BREEDING DECLINE

In a thoughtful paper Sir Walter *Hbley calls attention to the decline of horse breeding that has taken prace throughout Great Britain during the past decade, particularly in the useful classes, by which ig meant an animal on which we can depend for real work; which will serve for military purposes; as cavalry and and mounted infantry remounts, for artillery and transport work; for light and heavy draught in carriage, cart and waggon; in short, for all purposes other than sport. It is the breeding of horses for “'useful purposes” as distinguished from sporting purposes —i.e. facing, hunting, and polo—that has been, and still is. so greatly neglect’ed. He says:—'

What little has been done to stimulate the industry has been done by the horse breeding societies. During the last twenty-live years no fewer than twelve societies, each making one particular breed its special care, have beeu established. The Shire Horse Society was established in 1878, and the Hackney Horse Society in 1884. Special importance attaches to the work of these two bodies, for the breeds to which they devote tLeir attention stand out from others as the most valuable working horses we possess.

While the societies may be congratulated on the progress they have made, that progress must not blind us to the real issue. The horse breeding societies aim principally at improving the quality of the horses to whose interests they devote themselves. Their object is to encourage the production of the best.'and their shows furnish valuable lessons to breeders by bringing together- for inspection and reward the cream of the horses bred by the most careful and judicious breeders. The societies can do little or nothing to encourage the production of quantity; for assistance in making it pay to breed useful horses in large numbers tha*n they can be bred Under existing conditions the farmer must look elsewhere. Nothing could be gaid in favour of the establishment in England of State studs on similar lines to the great horse breeding organisations of foreign countries; but much more might be done by our Government to encourage horse breeding as a private industry.

What the Government might do, equally to the advantage of the army and of the farmer, is to encourage the breeding of horses suitable for remounts, for artillery and transport. This could be done in one or two ways—(l) either by buying from the farmers the horses at three years old, or three off, paying the same price as at present, i.e.. <£4o; or (2) by raising the limit of price. The farmer cannot breed, a horse ,keep I’m till he is five years old to fulfil the regulation limit as to age, and then sell the horse, at <£4o, the regulation price; he cannot afford to do it. He could, however. afford to sell a three-year-old at from <£3o to <£4o; and. if the Remount Department of the army offered a market for three-year-old horses of average merit at a fair price farmers would gladly breed more horses. It is simly a question of supply and demand. The Government now tries to buy for £4O an animal for which ~ a private purchaser will give £SO or more. It is estimated that 373.021 horses, valued at £9,698)331, were brought into England from 18 to 1902, inclusive. These 373,021 horses include a large proportion of carriage horses valued at from 50 to 150 guineas, which come chiefly from Normandy and parts of Germany; but the figures are swelled while the average value is reduced by large numbers of Russian, Swedish and Norwegian ponies, which are extremely cheap and are brought over m droves for sale at from £5 to £B. The total value of these 373,021 horses is given for statistical purposes as £9,698,831, but we eh all probably come nearer the true value if'we put the average cost at the low figure of £35 per head. At this average we find; that in the last ten years we have paid £13.055,735 to foreign breeders for horses. Against the large numbers of horses we buy from foreigners, we must sell a proportion of those we sell every year to go abroad. In the ten years 1893-1902, we have sold 271,916 horses to foreign buyers for £6,485,727. are two or three matters to be noticed in conectinon with the above figures. First, as to the average value of the horses exported. In 1892 we sold 11,232 horses worth £s63,lßl—that is to say, of an average value of about £SO per head; in. 1893 the average value had) fallen to abov. t £39 per head fin 1896 it stood at £22 lbs i<r head; and in 1902 the average value fell further to £2l 10s 6d per head. This fall in value is largely due to the increase in the number of worthless horses sent abroad 1 . The trade in wornout animals is one which has grown much in recent years; and though of no importance in itself to the horse breeder we must consider it carefully, because the figures are greatly swelled by including these knackers' horses. The very large majority of these horses namely. 125,626 —were sent to Holland and Belgium, and their average value was under £l3 per head (last year the average value was only £ll 2s per head). These worn out aimals* ar© really not to l>e .reckoned as horses at all; they represent so much inferior meat sold “on the hoof as the most economical method of shipping it. These worn out horses go direct from the ship to the slaughterers to be killed in these foreign countries; the flesh is used for the manufacture of sausages and other forms of food, the bones aregfund down for manure, and the . hoots are boiled, down to make glue.

The average value of t >.e houses sent to France, Hungary, Austria, Germany, and Russia is very much higher; it works out at ever J 660 per head. This shows us atom-© that the large majority was of a good and useful class; and from other sources of information w© learn that these animals were—mares and some stallions v hick the foreigners buy from us for hre, ding purposes. But meantime we must tnar-

shal dtir figures, and see how we stand when the worn out and useless horses, whose numbers inflate the returns', are struck out. In the year 1898 the number of horseg sold to the foreign knackers wag upwards of 14.000, and since then this trade has greatly increased. From the total exports of horses during the last, five years—namely. 158,000 horses—we deduct those sold to foreign knackers, say, 90,000; leaving only 68,009 horses of a good and useful class sent abroad. And during these five years. 1893-1902 w« liRTe bought from the foreigners 212,148 horses. Thus in five years we have bought from foreigners, 212,148 horses, and have-sold to foreigners 68,009, proving that we require some 144,139 horses every ...five years, or nearly 30,000 a .year more than we breed. These purchases cost us,’, at £35 a head, well over £1,000,000 a year. The large majority of horses sold by us to the foreigners consists of mares and stallions —many of them hack stallions — which ar© bought for breeding purposes. Year after year the agents of French, Austrian, Hungarian. German and other foreign buyers travel about England to buy • mares. They take these 'mares abroad, mate them with well chosen stallions, and sell us the progeny at a handsome profit. Surely horses bred and reared in England are likely to be at least as good as horses got by English stallions and mares in France or Hungary. The breeding grounds of foreign lands are not superior to ours, nor do foreign countries possess any advantages of climate over England. On the contrary, the eagerness with which the foreign breeders buy up English bred mares and stallions shows that we in England can breed better horse® than can be bred abroad. We cannot get away from the fact that the foreign agents are always in England. and) are always anxious to buy English stock to send abroad.

In no department of horse breeding is the influence of the foreigner more marked than in breeding high class carriage horses. Good upstanding carriage horses got by hack sires are the scarcest and most difficult animals to get in England, and the reason is that the foreigners appreciate the value of hack stock; they know.-well there is money to be made by breeding high class harness horses, and for this excellent reason they buy all the mares and stallions with shape and action they can persuade the English breeder to sell.