There is no time to be wasted, and if foals are allowed to get into low condition while being weaned, or during their first winter, they are less fit to make robust two-year-olds fit either to work or to breed, or what is more profitable, to accomplish both of these tasks together during part of the year. If early maturity is aimed at with any class of stock, feeding and management must be of the best, therefore farmers who half starve their foals and allow their yearlings to be wintered on a bit of hay must not expect their two-year-olds to be well grown and in the best possible condition for parental duties. The situation at the present time is such that every horse-breeder should do his best to utilize to the full the horse stock which he possesses, so that a sufficient number of horses may be obtained to carry on the agriculture and trade of the country, both of which are likely to require horses in large numbers in the immediate future. Mares will be relatively more scarce than stallions for the reason that the latter have not been “commandeered” for war purposes, but as geldings have been taken in large numbers, there is, and will be, a great demand for workers of all grades. Under such circumstances Shire breeders may serve their own interests by mating their fillies with a good young sire at two years old and keeping them in good condition for producing a strong vigorous foal. Very few of Robert Bakewell’s remarks are recorded, but this one is, “The only way to be sure of good offspring is to have good cows as well as good bulls,” and this applies with equal, if not greater, force in the business of horse-breeding; the sire cannot effect the whole of the improvement. CHAPTER V TEAM WORK Since my very youthful days I have always been accustomed to putting cart colts into the team at two years old, a system which cannot be too strongly advocated at the present time, when every worker in the shape of a horse is needed. There are numbers of high-class Shires living a life of luxurious idleness to-day, for the only reason that they were never trained to work, yet they would be quite as well in health, and more likely to breed, if they were helping to do ploughing or almost any kind of farm work when not actually nursing a foal or being prepared for any important show. When a Shire mare can be sold as “a good worker,” a buyer feels that he is getting something for his money, even if she fails to breed, so that there is much to be said in favour of putting fillies into the team, and nothing against, so far as I know, unless they are over-worked, strained, or stunted. A non-breeding mare which will not work is an impossible, or useless, sort of animal on a farm, where mere ornaments are not required, whereas if she is a worker in all gears she is “anybody’s mare”; on the other hand, she is nobody’s if she refuses either to work or to breed.