Word: remount
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Already Remount is going at a clip 14 times faster than a year ago. In its three depots (Front Royal, Va.; Fort Reno, Okla.; Fort Robinson, Neb.), 56 reserve officers are in training. It has 700 thoroughbred and purebred stallions (average cost $7.50 at stud), and it is looking a long way ahead. But not ahead of more experienced armies. Germany used 200,000 horses in the Polish campaign, more in France, now has approximately 800,000 in military service. Japan used horses heavily in China, plans to have 4,500 stallions at stud by 1945. Franco had to raise...
...Remount's breeding plan* was designed not so much to increase U. S. horse population (fallen from 20,000,000 in 1920 to 10,000,000 in 1940) as to improve the breed. Army stallions are lent to farmers, ranchers, breeders who have proper equipment and agree not to allow the promiscuity of pasture breeding. These agents of Remount charge mare owners $10 a foal: $5 at the time of service, $5 when the mare delivers the colt. Some agents, such as C. C. Townsend near San Angelo (who has five Government stallions) accept payment in chickens, eggs...
...farms in the Middle West, at dealers' stables, in the ranch country of Texas and the Northwest, it's usually a big day when the "guv'-ment buyers" come by. They are officers from the Remount depots and area stations. Remount's buyers travel some 50,000 miles a year over highways and byways, up the creek forks, in fields, pastures, cactus and brush. Sellers know these men want a sturdy, clean-footed, straight-legged horse that "travels right" (straight, no pacers), has good bone, short backs for Army saddles, that they prefer a horse that...
...this kind of horse Remount pays an average $165 a head. Within those specifications it must find light riding horses (for the Philippines), riding horses (cavalry), heftier but active and fast horses for field artillery. The buyers know that some day these horses may have to travel as much as 100 miles in 24 hours, gallop a mile in three minutes...
Nearest thing to an oldtime cavalry post is a Remount depot. There ex-cavalrymen who have a way with horses "gentle break" Army mounts in 120 days, without rodeo roughstuff. Veterinarians supervise horse conditioning and treat their patients for all manner of ailments, sometimes working on them as they stand, sometimes casting them (i.e., throwing them down) to make them take their medicine. When horses arrive at the depots they often fall sick of what oldsters call "shipping cold" (sometimes resulting in pneumonia). This cured, they go into training, come out gentled, trained to harness, pack or saddle, ready...