Not just a "Good" horse, Farceur was record-breaking - A Sesquicentennial feature

Grant Good was born and raised near Pilot Mound, Iowa. He was a local school teacher.  

Grant purchased the farm northeast of Ogden in 1902. He then became interested in animal husbandry. He began to prove a line-breeding theory using pigeons and Barred Plymouth Rock chickens.  In his theory, he wanted to line-breed to emphasize and carry on positive traits but eliminate the normal defects that came along with line-breeding. When he felt that he had figured out how to carry on the dominant gene, then he decided it was time to carry the process out into larger animals, specifically the farm’s draft horses. 

With the draft horse being the beast of burden on the farm and since they were utilized daily, not only on the farm, but also in a large part of the everyday life at that time,  it was important to him to make them more efficient and stronger.  

The early 1900s was a time when many breeders were reaching overseas for new blood and importing horses. Grant decided to do the same. 

He began to search Europe for a dominant stallion to bring back to Iowa to improve the herds of Iowa farmers as well as the Belgian breed as a whole. Besides Grant, there were many area farmers such as G.E. Meunch, W.B. Donelson, Simon Peterson, and L.O. Zunkel who were also interested in improving the local stallions in which to breed to.  It was vital to find that dominant stallion with ideal traits to pass on to its offspring, since you can improve a herd faster with one stallion, than you can with one mare.  

Grant began importation from Europe in the early 1900s. From documentation that we have found, Grant tended to ship from Antwerp, Belgium, to the Port of New York using Steinmann & Company. The family has invoices and photos of conditions onboard ship when ships were carrying 30-40 horses in the ship’s hold which would be all of Grant’s horses at times. 

More on the story, see the September 21 issue of The Ogden Reporter.

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