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[Page 357]
Report - 4
Light-harness. - This species of stock in the Colony may be divided into three classes: - 1st. Those from the pure-bred coaching-sire and dam. - 2nd. Those out of a roomy mare by the thorough or well-bred horse. - And, 2rd. Those out of a light mare by a draught horse. Of the first of these there are now scarcely any representatives in the Colony; certainly there were none at the Exhibition. Some few pure coaching-horses have indeed been introduced by Messrs. I.K. Cleeve, George Campbell, and W.W. Burt, but no systematic attempt has been made, or at any rate none is now being made, to maintain a breed of pure, light, harness-horses, and the progeny of the imported coaching-horses is now lost in the general stock.
Belonging to the second division there are a good many horses in different parts of the Colony; in fact nearly all the best of our coaching and light-harness-horses have been thus bred, as also have many of the better sort of the medium class.
Of the third division there are only too many, for almost all the worst of the middling, and nearly all the inferior and very inferior light-harness-horses have been bred in this way.
Well-bred light-harness. - These have been almost got by the thorough or well-bred horse out of roomy, active, clean-legged mares. A few however have been got by a heavy horse, generally a Clydesdale, out of a well-bred mare. This division contains a good many excellent animals, ranging from the showy well-bred carriage to the fast-trotting stylish buggy-horse. Their prices range from £8 to £10, from four to five years old, unbroken, and from £15 to £45, broken.
Middlilng Light-harness. - The principal portion of the best of these have been got by a horse with some pretensions to breed out of a large mare. The majority by a light-made draught horse out of saddle mares, and the balance by heavy draught horses out of small mares, or out of mares the descendants of that cross. The horses of this class are neither very handsome nor very good, and lack both carriage and style; but they are good slaves, and cost but little money. Their prices range from £1 to £8 at from four to five years old, unbroken, and from £3 to £12 broken.
Inferior Light-harness. - These are almost wholly a cross between the heavy horse and the light mare, or the descendants of that cross. They exhibit the ruinously prejudicial effect of crossing the lighter breeds with the heavy draught, though not exactly in the same way as in the case of the draught breed. In this case the evil that followed was the production of a lot of ill-made nondescripts, quite unfit for draught purposes, while in the case of the light-harness, and also of the saddle-horses, damage was done in two ways. First, by the production of a comparatively worthless animal; and secondly, and most fatally by destroying the race of large, roomy, well-bred mares, which the Colony possessed before the cross was so generally practised, and supplying their place by a lot of ill-bred mongrels. This accounts for the complaints so frequently heard, that we have now no mares of the right stamp from which to breed good upstanding saddle-horses. It has already been said, in treating of the draught horses, that the effect of putting a draught sire to a well-bred and light mare has been to give us a race of big-headed, short-necked, light-boned, long-backed, badly-coupled nondescripts; and if we add to this that they are also, in virtue of their paternal descent, cloddy and straight in the shoulder, low in the wither, and big in the feet, the inferiority of the large proportion of our light harness-horses, which are bred from mares of this description, is easily accounted for. The horses in this division of this class are especially deficient in carriage, style, and endurance.
The remarks previously made as to the causes of deterioration in the draught horse, such as the absence of fencing, the too general carelessness and neglect of owners of stock, the losses through drought, the sale to other Colonies of the best brood-mares, and the breeding from inferior sires, and the injudicious intermixture of breeds, apply equally to the case of the light-harness-horse. Here too there have been no importations to make good the defects. Very few coaching-horses have been imported during the last ten years, nor have there been many hunters, though the very best light-harness-horses that we have have been got by them.