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been properly fed and exercised, is sufficiently developed and strong to bear the gradual work which precedes and facilitates breaking. By the age of four years he could be properly broken and rendered fit for military service, after a few months of which work, his training is complete, and he has the strength and endurance that are pre-eminently necessary in an army horse.
If we wish to discard routine, and to adopt a system of liberal feeding and rational breaking, we will obtain a troop horse which, at four and a half years, will be worth as much or more than the six-year old horse, after he has been broken.
Whence comes the deeply-rooted idea that a horse cannot be used in the army before he is five years old ? How is it that many eminent remount officers have perpetuated this principle ? I suppose that, having ascertained that the five-year old horses they procured were weak and undeveloped, they concluded that it would have been impossible to work them earlier. They were content with the fact, but did not try to find out the cause.
Nevertheless it has been long and repeatedly proved that a three-year old horse, which has been well fed and well exercised, can do very hard work, and maintain a high rate of speed.[1]
If the objection is made that some (not many) of the animals may suffer, I answer that I propose that only horses three years and six months and even three years and nine months old should be broken, in which case they will have a preparation of three months. Also, I would not require from them such severe work as similarly bred animals which race, have to do, and which are trained at two-and-a-half years old at the latest.
Another objection it made about the great difference between the weights carried by a race horse and troop horse ; but the latter is a year older than the former, and his stronger build enables him to carry weight better. He is hardier, he carries his full weight only on exceptional occasions, and his work is much slower. If we go on gradually, as is done with race horses, we shall succeed without any difficulty in developing his weight-carrying power.
To the pure theorists who wish to wait for the complete ossification of the ↩︎