The Year Palouse Horses Were Worth Less Than Hog Feed

Colfax, April 30.—There are two or three men in various parts of the county hunting for a few first-class work horses for use in hauling ore in the Trail Creek and other mining districts. As horses are plentiful and there is little or no competition, they are having no trouble in finding what they want, but are taking some time in order to get them as cheaply as possible. Horses weighing from 1,300 to 1,400 pounds seem to be the most desirable. They must be well built, unblemished, sound, well broken and good pullers. Horses of this description are being picked up at prices ranging from $60 to $75. A few years ago such animals brought from $125 to $150 and were shipped to Eastern markets from this county by the hundred.

But for the last two years all outside markets have been effectually closed. Probably not more than 150 or 200 horses have been shipped from the county in the last eighteen months, and some of them have been brought back on account of not being able to find a market. Meanwhile the stock on hand has been rapidly increasing, until there are thousands of horses throughout the eastern part of the state that are not worth feeding.

For two seasons past the outside range in the lower Palouse country has been tolerably good, although tolerably well stocked, and horses have done pretty well without much care, but this season it threatens to be different. The unusually light fall of rain so far has caused the grass to grow less than usual, and sheep by the tens of thousands have overrun nearly all of the range and kept the grass eaten down to the ground. It will be a month or six weeks yet before the sheep are sheared and driven away to their summer ranges in the mountains, and the growth of grass in that time does not warrant any more than enough to feed them until that time.

Horses that are not worth feeding and taking care of, and few are worth that, can be purchased now for almost any price. Cayuses are so nearly worthless that even the assessor does not ask how many a man has, not deeming them worthy of assessment as property.

Horses weighing from 700 to 1,000 pounds can be bought by the hundred at prices ranging from $1 to $5, and “broke” saddle horses are offered at from $3 to $10 and find no buyers.

A suggestion that is receiving considerable attention here, as elsewhere, is the feeding of horseflesh to hogs. While it would reasonably seem that for human consumption horse meat would be much cleaner and more desirable in every way than hog meat, as long as the consumers retain their present ideas the transfer of the former into the latter will be the only means of fitting it for table use.

A gentleman near Endicott, who has some 350 head of horses and about 150 hogs, finds the latter so much more profitable than the former that he has already killed half a dozen of the poorest of his band for hog feed by way of an experiment. He figures that the horse meat will at least make more pork pound for pound than wheat or grain food, and at the rate a 1,000 pound cayuse would easily be worth $5 to kill for hog feed.

The horse beef canning factory at Portland also suggests another possibility in the way of a market for horses and will be watched with considerable interest. Last year a few horses for that establishment were bought in this and adjoining counties, but this year they seem to be able to find all they need without coming so far.