The Vanishing Farm-horse
By ROBERT WOODALL
IN a recently published report Our Dumb Friends' League deplored the decline in the agricultural horse-population of Britain. No doubt many people who either read this report or saw references to it in the Press may well have reflected that, as farm mechanisation has so obviously come to stay, this was nothing more than a display of sentimentalism on the part of an organisation which has, so to speak, a vested interest in the task of saving the horse from extinction. But the report went on to make the very pertinent comment that, if ever war came and petrol was difficult to obtain, a large part of our farming operations might be brought to a standstill.
It requires no great effort of the imagination to realise that such a catastrophe could easily occur. For although during the recent war we had enough petrol for our essential needs, it would be rash to assume that the economic conditions of that war must necessarily reproduce themselves in the next. If, therefore, the calamity of another war did come upon us, and a resourceful enemy managed to prevent supplies of oil reach- ing our shores, we should undoubtedly try to replace the tractor by its only possible substitute, the horse. Unfortunately, if the number of our working horses continues to decline as swiftly as at present, we should find to our dismay that there were none available.
That this is no exaggeration can be seen from an examination of the relevant statistics. In 1919, for example, the year in which farm-mechanisation began, there were 1,250,000 hoses working on our farms. Even by 1939, when the tractor Had become a common enough sight in our countryside, there were still more than 1,000,000 horses left. During and after the Second World War, however, mainly as a result of the great ploughing-up campaigns, the tractor began to replace the horse at such a rate that, according to the most recent figures published by the Ministry of Agriculture, the number of horses used for agricultural purposes is now only 432,000. In other words the number has declined by an average of 50,000 a year during the last twelve years, and as it is still so declining, unless suitable measures are taken in time, by 1960 only racing and riding horses will have survived.
Nevertheless, there may at first sight be some force in the argument with which the more devout apostles of farm- mechanisation confront those who assert that we should be foolish to let the horse disappear. They say that, although a shortage of horses may prove a serious matter in a future war, the necessity, in our precarious economic situation, to produce all the food we can ourselves forces us to an ever-increasing use of the tractor. We could not, even if we wanted to, put the clock back. The answer is, of course, that nobody, least of all the farmer, who knows that a man with a standard four- wheeled tractor can plough as much land in a day as a man with two horses can in a week, wants to put the clock back. But there is another side to the question. As Mr. Tom Williams, Minister of Agriculture in the two post-war Socialist administra- tions, said three years ago at Dorchester, "increase in mechanisation was bound to lead to a reduction in the horse population, but in my view there is a place both for the tractor and the horse on the farm. Apart from the small family farm which cannot afford a tractor, there are still on the larger farms a number of jobs which the horse can do more conveniently than the tractor."
On all farms, for example, there is a good deal of odd carting work to be done, work that entails frequent stopping and start- ing, loading and unloading. Such tasks can usually be more economically done by the horse, leaving the tractor free for heavier work. Then, when farm-roadways are wet and slippery, as they invariably, are in the British winter, the horse can still move a good load when the lorry or tractor stands bogged and helpless in the mud. The farm-horse, which demands no expensive spare parts, no inaccessible replacements, is in many ways a less costly power-unit than the tractor. It is not unreasonable, theretore, to assert that we should do well to retain some horses on our farms today, not simply as an insurance for the future, but because to do so is a sound economic proposition. It is, however, impossible to deny that there are difficulties in the way of arresting the decline in the number_of working horses. These difficulties may not be insuperable, but that they exist at all underlines the need for a-vigorous policy on the subject. First Of all there is the shortage of stallions., _Nothing is more likely to kill the heavy horse than a lack of stallions to breed from, and the decline in the number of stallions has been disproportionately large when measured against the decline in the total number of horses. To quote only one example, the number of licences for registered stallions granted by the Clydesdale Society in 1939 was 460. Ten years later the figure had fallen to 154. Most of the other breed societies can show similar figures; so it is scarcely surprising that the Ministry of Agriculture's latest returns give a total for the whole country of only 1,800 stallions for service. It is, how- ever, only fair to say that the position has probably improved a little during the past year or so.
Equally serious is the shortage of horse-breakers and horse- keepers. There is clearly not much point in Producing a larger number of young horses if there are not the men to break them in and look after them. That would be simply to go to a great deal of trouble in order to increase the turn-over of the knackers' yards. The fact must be faced that the old-fashioned type of horse-breaker, whose patience and skill gave us the docile and willing animal of tradition, is dying out. So, too, is the horse- keeper, the man who is ready to spend time in the stables caring for"his horses. For looking after horses is a seven-day- a-week job, and it is difficult to criticise the modern farm- worker for his desire to cease work promptly by merely turning an engine key. Yet as cowmen, pigmen, poultrymen all have to attend to livestock seven days a week, it should not be too _difficult a problem to get a pair of horses fed.
These considerations suggest that the farm-horse of the future—if, in our wisdom, we decide that he is to have a future —must be one that requires as little attention as possible. He should, for example, be free of hair on the legs,ifor although to the person with little knowledge of farming this point may seem a small one, an unconscionable amount of time must be spent in stables cleaning the mud-caked legs of the breeds heavily endowed with hair. He should also be so inherently docile that he can be broken in the shortest possible time, and so quiet that he can, if necessary, be safely entrusted to a land girl. This indicates that we should be well-advised to concen- trate on the two breeds in which such characteristics have always been most conspicuous, the Suffolk and the Percheron, both of which, incidentally, have the added recommendation that they are hardy, long-lived and contented with plain fare. Be that as it may, we have to decide—and decide quickly--: whether we are going to allow the farm-horses of Britain to become extinct. Although the official view is that this would be an act of incredible folly, the ultimate decision rests with the farmers. Fortunately, there are signs that many of our most thoughtful farmers are beginning to realise that the horse has not altogether outlived his usefulness, and that the best way to ensure his survival both in their own and the national interest is to find a job for him on the farm.
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