Seven Year Old Horses
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An old farmer once said, “What a year it must have been for colts seven years ago this spring.” No person who has never attempted to buy a horse can appreciate the remark, but if he will let it be known that he wants to buy a good horse, he will be struck with the circumstance that all the horses that are of any particular account were born seven years ago. Occasionally there is one that is six years old, but they are not plenty, Now, those of us who lived around here seven years ago did not have our attention called to the fact that the country was flooded with colts. There were very few twin colts, and it was seldom that a mother had half a dozen colts following her. Farmers and stock raisers did not go round worrying about what they were going to do with so many colts. The papers, if we recollect right, were not filled with accounts of the extraordinary number of colts born. And yet it must have been a terrible year for colts, because there are only six horses in Milwaukee that are over seven years old, but one of them was found to have been pretty well along in years when he worked in Burnham’s brick yard in 1848, and finally the owner owned up that he was mistaken twenty-six years. What a mortality there must have been among horses that would now be eight, nine or ten years old. There are none of them left. And a year from now, when our present stock of horses would naturally be eight years old they will all be dead, and a new lot of seven years old horses will take their places. It is singular, but it is true. That is, it is true unless horse dealers lie, and THE SUN would be slow to charge so grave a crime upon a useful and enterprising class of citizens. No, it cannot be, and yet, don’t it seem peculiar that all the horses in this broad land are seven years old this spring? We leave the suject for the youth of the land to wonder over,