Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1893-12-01
JOSEPH BATTELL,
MiddleburY, Vt.
A GERMAN VIEW.

One of the foreign visitors to the
Worlds fair. and who also visited the
different breeding establishments, was
Herr Bruchard Won Oettingen, stud mas
ter of the imperial stud of Germany, and
in conversation with a New York
newspaper man he had the following to
say regarding our methods of breeding;
81 could learn great deal more in
England in a week than year in this
country he said. 81 do not mean by
this to reflect upon the thorOughness
of your breeders, but must say that they
are careless. They do not seem to look on
horse-breeding as a busness-one to be
studied, and out of which study they
NAV learn what means to use in proper
lv mating animals. | have seen great
MANY of the farms where foals have been
permitted to nurse for eight months {;
while this in itself may be very good for
the foal. it is very bad for the coming
foal. Then your methods of breeding
are entirely different. You mate any
thing with speed. Your breeders seem
to have very little idea of proper ration
for the growth of the animal. They feed
too much corn, which makes soft,
spongv bone, instead of having finer
bone with bran and oats. Some of your
breeding farms are on scale of mag
nificence that could not be afforded by
the roval houses of Europe. For in
stance, in Palo Alto there are over 800
men to take care of the horses. This is
a small army, and the expense must be
something terrific. The kindergarten
system of educating trotter is good
one as far as it goes, but it only fits
them tor good speed sustained for a
mile. This, in my opinion, is where
your breeders are making a serious mis-
take. Everything is made subservient
to the one-mle record. The horse is fit
ted, trained and worked with The idea to
knock off few seconds on smooth
track with a bicycle sulky. OF what
use is such animal? If he could not 90
fast he would not bring $50. Under
stand that am not disparaging the trot
ter in any way, for American skill has
certainly done more in the fight with
time for short distance than any horse
in the world. | am looking solely on the
utility of such a horse. He is not useful
because his bones are bad, his joints are
often too small, and when large enough
have inherent disease. He is not fitted
to overcome difficulties, and is only use
full in the sense of winning races. A
trotteT in the European sense must be
able to go over any kind of roads, up hill
or down hill, before any sort of wagon,
drawing 800 to 400 pounds, at twelve
to fourteen-mile an hour gait We do
not in any sense endeavor to smooth the
way of difficulties for the sake of a rec
ord. We want horse that can get out
and do his work without any nursing.
Then. another thing, we hear very little
of team records for trotters in this coun-
try. | do not mean, of course, the SEN
sational performance made by the favor
lite driving pairs OF some few gentlemen,
but am talking about taking the coun-
try as whole. With us there are four
finland trotting races for gentlemen
drivers, and it takes a good man, | tell
you, to keep four horses on the trOt ev-
cry minute of the four miles, the dis
lance usually gone over"