THE REARING AND TREATMENT OF HORSES.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume X, Issue 478, 21 September 1899, Page 15

THE REARING AND TREATMENT OF HORSES.

Writing on the subject of the rearing and treatment of horses, the well-known English authority, Mr Allison, remarks: —“That we in England h*ve better grass than any to be found in California is certain, but, on the other hand, how many of our yearlings have had the free scope for exercise and fresh air that falls to the lot of those bred at the Bancho del Paso and other American studs ? Certainly Mr Haggin’s youngsters as a lot beats ours for legs and feet, and I do not think many of ours would have stood such a journey and landed in anything like -such shape. Take the pick of the Doncaster sale yearlings and send them to California —what would they be like when they got there ? It is very clear that the method of rearing stock has far more to do with the general welfare of the breed than has the method of training and racing them. We are apt here to imagine that early racing and short distances are at the root of all evils in our horseflesh, but we see these robust, hardy yearlings from America, and have to face at the same time the fact that there is considerably less long-distance racing in America than there is here, while yearlings are regularly tried in the summer, and even in the spring, and it is common practice to run horses very much more frequently than we do here. Often enough they run horses 40 or 50 times a year and even their highest class ones, such as Hansver was, are taxed in a manner we should hardly dream of. Hanover in his three-year-old season, when I saw him, ran 27 times, winning 20 races. It seems clear, then, that as the Americans have maintained constitution, limbs, and soundness in the face of this sort of treatment, it is in the rearing of their stock that they can teach us ■.something, while we, on our part will not make our horses better by running them over long distances, unless we rear them in such a manner as to fit them for this or any other trial.”