The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1902-02-13
THE SUGk t.t-E

throughout the Years OF depression in
the prices of liorsedesh u Aieii wrecked
so many fortunes in Kentucky the
breeders and feeders of tie Blue Grass
State found one branch OF their bust
ness which remained f.g.J stable and
remuneratiye, says Francis J. sHagan
in Breeders Gazette. When royalty
bred colts failed to pay for the service
fee. let alone their expensive care and
keep, they found the market for Ken
lucky mules always good. The long
cared hybrid has been dubbed by Proc
tor Knott an animal without pride of
parentage or hope of posterity." He is
rather the result of d misalliance,
with the blood of kings and queens of
the turf flowing through his veins and
bis aristocratic lineage on his dams
side showing in his coat, shape and
symmetry, giving to the distinctive
Kentucky mule characteristics readily
recognized by the dealer, who instantly
Classics him in a drove of hundreds.
His principal demand is for the sugar
fields of the south, where speed and
quickness are sine qua non. There
smoothness and symmetry are sought
by the planters as indicative of ability
to do the fast work required under high
pressure, and there the rough and rug
ged fellows from out of the west, SUI
perior in weight, substance and bone
and really superior for purely draft
purposes, sell for less than their breedy
looking congeners from the blue grass.
With the depression of the market
for highly bred horses hundreds of
high priced stations were retired from
the public stud for lack of public pat
ronage in this state and the mares
bred to jacks instead. The increase in
the mule supply failed to depress the
mule market, the quality of their get
simply giving prices stimulus in
stead. While the horse market has
now recovered and breeding resumed,
the mule market has as steadily ad-
vanced. There has never been time
when there was not good market for
the Kentucky mule from the moment
he was foaled until incapacitated by
age, but there has never been a time
when the demand was stronger than
the present. Despite the failure Of all
feed crops and the consequent sacrifice
of both breeding and feeding cattle
and other stock, the mule feeders are
bidding the price of sucking mules up
until it promises to reach the highest
point since the war. The mule rings
at all the county fairs throughout the
state have drawn more attention than
any other attraction, and no good ones
go unsold One hundred dollars is
a common price for the best and $50
the going fare for fifty-two inch wean-
lings. Mr.. B. F. Guthrie Of Shelby
county told me he had agents at work
in twenty-eight counties endeavoring
to buy at that price and feared he
would be unable to fill his barI,s.
While many have perforce in recent
years become more or less mule breed
ers, some of the richest blue grass
pastures in this state have never
been trodden by any but the dainty
hoofs of the mule, smaller even than
those of the thoroughbred, and some
of the handsomest homes have been
built out of the profits in mules. While
no animal pays higher for pasturage
and feed than the highly bred horse
when he pays at all, no business is
more precarious or requires more cap
ital and ability to succeed, together
with certain preponderance of ''luck."
With the mule these elements are
largely eliminated. Values are ap-
proXimately fixed. The cattle or hog
market is feverish compared with that
for these Kentucky sugar mules. They
are convertible into cash at any mo-
ment from birth to old age. No kind
of live stock enjoys such immunity
from disease. A dead mule is such
rara avis that the query, "What be-
comes of all the old mulesY is a CO.
nundrum equally unanswerable with
that Of "Who struck Billy Patterson
1t is popular superstition in Ken.
lucky that you cannot kill mule, and,
like most other popular superstitions,
none are hardy enough to endeavor it's
practical refutation.