A HERDSMAN'S HANDBOOK FOR THE MODERN HOMESTEADER

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Children outgrow horses almost as fast as they outgrow clothes. The horse or pony that is just the right size for your youngster today is very apt to be much too small in a few months or a year. Better to buy one big enough to last a while if you expect to keep up with a growing child.

It would be easy to place undue emphasis on the age of your first horse since our admiration for "youth" in any form often causes us to pick a very young mount, sometimes with disastrous results.

The improved feeds and the intensive systems of management now used often produce horses that have reached their ultimate size and weight before they're 18 to 24 months old. Since they seem to be grown-up, such animals are frequently subjected to strenuous training and hard work before they reach maturity.

No matter how large he is, no horse is really adult and ready for extremely hard work until he's at least five years old. Before this age his bones are still relatively soft and-even though he can do hard work—he does so only at the expense of his future health and usefulness.

If a horse has been fed properly from birth, gently broken-out and trained as a two-or-three-year-old and then used for moderate tasks until he's four or five, there is really no reason to discriminate against him . . . even when he's 10 or 15 years old! If he's in good health and has no vices or bad habits, an older horse has the advantage of experience over a younger animal . . . which is especially desirable for an inexperienced rider. Very few combinations of man and animal can be as troublesome as a young, green rider mounted on a young, green horse.

There's an old saying that "There is no such thing as a bad color on a good horse" . . . and I would certainly recommend that you pretend to be colorblind when you pick yours. Do not let an animal's surface pigmentations blind you to obviously much more important defects in other areas.

The only time color should be a factor in the selection of a horse is if a certain pattern is necessary to satisfy the breed association requirements for a specific breed. Color really influences the usefulness of a horse only if the animal's hooves are light colored. White or light-colored hooves tend to wear faster than dark-colored ones and are somewhat more prone to cracking and chipping.

By now you probably have a pretty complete picture in your mind of the horse you're looking for. If a specific breed satisfies all of your other requirements . . . by all means, buy an animal of that breed. As a general rule, you can expect to pay more for a registered animal but the fact that you have a complete record of the horse's pedigree, or ancestry, only increases the pride of ownership and the value of the animal—and any potential offspring—in question.

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