LONG EXPERIENCE AS BREEDER

Southland Times, Issue 24000, 15 December 1939, Page 21

LONG EXPERIENCE AS BREEDER

TIE development of light horse breeding and riding has no keener advocate than Mr J. Carnegy Gardner, a prominent director of the Southland A. and P. Association. Mr Gardner, who has been in charge of the light horse section at the show for many years is convinced, however', that the horses of today have deteriorated from the high standard of former years. Mr Gardner has been associated with the Birchwood Hunt for 53 years. He hunted for his father, the late Captain Gardner, for five years and followed across country for 50 years. He is president of the Invercargill branch of the hunt.

Mr Gardner has been president of the Clifden Racing Club for 28 years. He has ridden in steeplechases and point-to-point meetings, but 45 years ago, while riding Patchwork in the Great Western Steeplechase, he met with an accident and suffered a serious leg injury.

After a life-long experience of horsebreeding and farming, Mr Gardner retired three years ago and came to live in Invercargill. He is now spending his time trying to create interest among the young people of Invercargill in riding and for this purpose he has

formed a riding club of between 30 and 40 members.

“My experience tells me that horses have degenerated during the last 50 years,” says Mr Gardner. “It is very difficult at the present time to purchase a good upstanding, weight-carry-ing hack or a hack of any kind of class and stamina fit to exhibit at metropolitan shows. This also applies to horses for rembunts. “The reason is that farmers are not breeding light horses of quality, as they have no use for them. The motor-car has been the downfall of that noble friend of man, the horse, which was the only means of transport in the early days, when men had to drive or ride between 60 and 70 miles over bad and unformed roads. The horses had to be made of the best material to stand up to the work in those days.” Several good sires of the past excite the admiration of Mr Gardner. Outstanding, in his opinion, were Traducer, Atlantic, Golden Butterfly, Patchwork, Wee Lad and The Buzzard. He maintains that they left horses of good constitution and good upstanding hacks. “The crossing of imported trotters with thoroughbreds did a lot of harm,” says Mr Gardner. “They ruined the stamina and the class of the hacks. The trotters first imported to New Zealand were of a poor class, slacklybuilt, round-boned and poor in stamina. They were not the same class as the trotters of today.”