Sacramento daily record-union., 1889-09-24
AN EQUINE PARADISE.
SENATOR sTANFoRD's FAMOUS PALo
ALTO HORSE FARM.
Weanlings Taught to Trot and Make
Marvellous Records in the
"Kindergarten.'
From tine Chicago Herald. |

80 @SSe -
This is question that has been put to
every horseman of note in the country,
but not one seems able to answer it. Ell
Rio Rey, for instance, at two years old is
the wonder of the racing world, but IL,
another year this wonderful brother of .be
Emperor of Norfolk will be retired co the
stud because shrewd old Theodore. Winters
knows when the horse has coached the
zenith of his fame. And 30 with all the
other two-year-old flyers from the Pacific
coast They reach tlle pinnacle of their
fame early, and then retire. A gentle
man, a horse-fancier and now and then a
buyer at the California sales, which have
become somett thing of feature in New
York of late years, told reporter for the
Herald that he had just returned from a
visit to two or three of the Pacific breed
ing establishments and thought he had
solved the problem.
The gentleman is good talker and has
evidently an observant eye, for his grasp of
details in the methods of California horse
breeding is not only great, but intensely
interesting.
Being much interested in the phenom-
email trotters that come from that region,
went down to Palo Alto to see the famous
Stanford breeding farm" said this gentle
man. Il had been over the places in
Kentucky, notably the Woodburn farm
and the Belle Meade place, at Nashville,
and thought / knew what an equine para
disc was, but found / didn't.
Palo Alto is about forty miles from San
Francisco, in what is known as the Santa
Clara valley. The horse part of the estate
comprises about three thousand acres,
though good many more acres are in
vines and forests and the private grounds
OF the railroad baron's summer retreat.
However" continued the gentleman,
am not going to rail against the gentle
mans wealth. l want simply to describe a
horse paradise. Talk about princes and
princesses of effete monarchies being reared
in velvet and fed from gold spoons; the
nearest approach to that in this great Re-
public is this equine prlncipality at PaIo
Alto. Dean Swifts celebrated Houyhn-
huns lever had a better time in their
kingdom than have the modern Houyhn-
huns of the Stanford place.
"The railroad station for Palo Alto is
Menlo Park. A mile from Menlo you
enter broad gateway, pass porter's
lodge and enter upon the big domain. A
magnificent broad avenue, lined with
stately oaks, and winding through a dense
foliage, leads you to the Senator's house
another mile away. You pass out, and
the same avenue, still winding for another
mile as only Frederick Law Omstead
can make it wind brings you to the crest
of an elevation. There. spread out in a
little valley below, is the home of the
Houyhuhums. The buildings, paddocks,
race tracks, training schools, Kindergarten,
wind mills, machinery houses and the
houses and cottages of the 200 people en-
ployed about the place, lie before you like
huge village in the foreground of land
scape. This village, however, is only the
night quarters of the more favored of the
equine kingdom, and the nursery of their
progeny. Long before you come in sight
of it, indeed, you pass ffty-acre lot after
lot, filled with stately 'matrons' and their
tottering little ones from one to six weeks
old. These are the famous blooded brood
mares, tc get which the big railroad baron
has nearly decimated the State of Ken
lucky. There are now over three hun
dred brood mares on the place and a score
of stations of the finest blood, beginning
with Electioneer and ending with some
Of the choicest colts. The youngest of the
lords of the manor is one of the sons of the
great sire, for which the Senator refused
$4,000 when the animal was two years
old.
Descending from the slight elevation,
you pass through lane 100 feet wide
This is the main street of the horse vii.
lage. On either side for nearly half a
mile are half-acre paddocks, each with
water-tubs, feed-troughs and an oak tree
or two for shade. These are divided, not
by the ordinary board fence of Ken
tucky farm, but by palings painted white,
with each gateway done in brown. There
are nine huge hay barns clustered about
the center of the village. These are
painted in brown, with white trimmings.
A great grist mill, with steam power for
grinding the food, is near at hand Another
huge barn is for the work horses and
mules of the place-nearly $50 in num-
berthe servitors of the pampered aris-
tocracy of the kingdom. A magnificent
race-track lies on the outskirts of the viii
lage, with training track for colts within
the outer circle. Another building is set
apart for the 'kindergarten'-a great
canopy covering a sawdust ring an eighth
of a mile long. This is where the little
weanlings, six and eight months old, are
brought to be taught their first PAGES.
Right here" said the enthusiastic
horse lover, +" is where got the first ink
ling of what it is that enabled a two-year-
old in California to trot mile in 2:lS. as
Sunol did. 1t is forcing and feeding.
Trainer Gallagher gave me the history of
Sunol, and the life she led there for two
years is the life of all of them. When
Sunol was six months old she was brought
in with twenty other fillies from the pas
lures in which their mothers roamed
The weaving process is quite easy. The
youngsters are put on steamed grain food
at once. In the morning a quart of
steamed barley mixed with bran, in the
evening two quarts of ground barley
steamed and moistened with lime water. is
about their daily diet. That is pretty
high food for weanlIng When / was a
boy on the old farm in PENNSYLVANIA it
was pretty lucky colt or filly that ever
saw anything but hay or grass until it was
two years old. But at Palo Alto the
babies are stuffed with grain from the
start. / was there in July, and there was
no green food to speak of, with the excep-
tion of green-corn tops, of which the little
ones had three diets week Even then
it was chopped in steam-cutter and
mixed with bran.
AS soon as the babies have forgotten
their mothers comes the beginning of their
life's work. The leading halter and soft
rubber bit kept in the mouth for half an
hour day is the A B G. Then comes the
kindergarten track to discover if apy of
them have natural gait. Half a dozen
are put into the sawdust circle at once.
A man stands in the middle with a long
whip, which he waves furiously, but no
little one is ever permitted to feel its
| sting. All start around the ring, first in a
coltish canter, and then some little pupil
more promising than theothers will strike a
trot. Soon another will do the same. An
apple or lump of sugar is the reward OF
merit. Usually before the class has fin.
ished all OF them viii be Jogging about on
trot Then new batch is taken, and
in few weeks forty or fifty lillies and as
many colts have gone through the kinder.
garten course. Meantime every little one
OF either sex is handled and fondled. The
[ pOlfS and fillias ara rafap