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[Page 356]
Report - 3
Inferior and very inferior Draught. - These are mongrels, as may be easily seen by studying their points in detail. They are a mixture of the heavy sire and light mare, and all have more or less coarseness about them. As a general description it may be said that they have large, coarse, fleshy heads and short necks, that they are long in the barrel, weak in the loins, light in the bone, and comparatively small in size. In fact they are little else than an ill-made, cross-bred, light-harness-horse, and considering their origin nothing better was to be expected. When the gold-fields were discovered in 1851, there was an immense demand for draught horses, and they ran up to fabulous prices. Anything that had the smallest resemblance to a draught-horse, if it were only the possession of having legs and a big head, brought at that time from £30 to £60, while a really good animal would fetch from £100 to £200. The best market was in Victoria, where draught stock was in great demand to take up stores to the gold-fields, and not only the male but even the female stock was sent across the border so tempting were the prices. To add to this exodus, breeders in Victoria sent up agents, who scoured the districts of the Hawkesbury and the Hunter, and bought up all the decent brood-mares they could find. Since that date there has also been a further demand on our brood draught mares to stock New Zealand and Queensland. This drain upon our resources would not have been of so much importance if the vacuum had been supplied by the importation of first-class draught stock from the mother country, but unfortunately this precaution has been almost wholly omitted. During the last ten years there have not been more than twenty head of draught sires imported, and hardly any mares.
The consequence was, that tempted by the prospect of immediate gains, breeders endeavoured to produce stock having some draught characteristics. Those who had good up-standing well-bred mares, put them to draught horses, and some whose studs consisted only of light saddle-mares put them to draught sires. The result was a lot of cross-bred mongrels, and in most of the midland and eastern districts of the Colony there are thousands of this cross-bred stock employed by carriers on the roads; and a team of from six to twelve of them, small, nondescript, and mostly ill-fed beasts, may be seen drawing, at the rate of about half a ton per head, with a driver trudging alongside, and handling the team as he would so many bullocks. The horses get no grooming, and little or no corn or chaff, unless they happen to be in or near town. In Victoria, whither the best of our horse-stock went, a team generally consists of from four to six fine, well-fed, well-groomed, heavy draught horses, and they draw at the rate of about a ton a horse, with the driver seated on the box. It is partly due to the superiority of their teams that the Victorians supply so much of the south-western portion of this Colony.
The scarcity and dearness of labour during the gold mania was another cause of the deterioration of horse-stock. Station hands left in large numbers, and stations were everywhere under-manned. Very few runs were at that time fenced in, and horses wander more than cattle or sheep, and especially in years of drought. Many owners were too short-handed or too careless to muster their stock periodically, and much of their male increase was allowed to be too old before they were cut and branded. On open runs wild and inferior horses thus came in contact with the mares, the latter also beginning to breed at too early an age; and we have here the origin of thousands of those worthless animals which have recently been shot down, either to get rid of them, or for the sake of their hair, or which have been sold at prices ranging from five to twenty shillings a piece. The fact of the great inferiority of the draught stock of this Colony is indisputable, and the causes of it are easily traceable; but, to recognize both the fact and the cause is the first step towards improvement, and to this the Agricultural Society has already greatly contributed. The Colony has a great deal of lee-way to fetch up before it can recover the position it once held, or place itself abreast of the neighbouring Colony of Victoria; but a beginning has been made in the march of improvement, and if steadily prosecuted in the right direction a few years will show a change. There are more than a dozen breeders now in the Colony who are devoting themselves to the production of first-class draught stock, and the competition of their exhibits each year will both indicate and stimulate the progress.