The rural economy and agriculture of Australia and New Zealand / as seen by Robert Wallace.

  • Robert Wallace
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The rural economy and agriculture of Australia and New Zealand / as seen by Robert Wallace. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    number of mares are got to breed than is possible in either India or in Britain, where breeding animals of both sexes are kept in a condition of partial or complete captivity. A stallion placed with a number of mares (say 8o to loo as a suitable season’s allowance for him) assumes control of the whole stud, rounds it up in grand style in the evening, and drives any reluctant loiterers forward to the general muster. He selects his mates for the night, and then allows the mob to disperse. A majority of horse-breeders are in favour of a special tax on entire horses, to prevent careless managers keeping inferior males to reproduce their species. The nature of the country has much to do with the character for usefulness of the horses bred in it, more especially as regards saddle and light harness stock. For example, the district in New South Wales called the Western Slopes, and similar land in the adjoining Colonies, with a moderate climate, plenty of shelter, sweet pasture, good soil, and a rolling surface, produce horses for physical development, hardiness, and sure-footedness, which leave nothing to be desired. To work either in saddle or harness such horses are much more safe from accident than horses which have been reared on a level country where the development of muscle and lung due to the necessary exercise of their functions is not so great. The habit of varied use is not so fully acquired in the “ plains ” country. The difference is similar in the case of horses or ponies in this country reared on the flats, as compared with those accustomed from youth to a hilly district. Horses bred in the interior, within the area of scanty rain-fall, have better feet and more endurance than horses from the southern parts of Australia. In some places where ironstone comes to the surface, horses have to be shod before they are turned out, and even these protections get very hot.
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