IS EED CLOVEE INJUEIOUS TO HORSES? 



Many farmers are strongly prejudiced against clover hay, 

 especially for horses, supposing, when fed to them for any 

 length of time, it produces cough and tends to heaves. 

 Perhaps if more care was used in cutting the clover for hay 

 at the proper time, and in curing it for the barn in the 

 right way, much of this prejudice would be done away with. 

 Says Mr. Bartlett of Warner, who has collected the follow- 

 ing evidence : — 



For many years I have kept my horses almost exclusively 

 on clover hay through our long winters, and if the clover 

 was cut when about one half the blossoms had turned 

 brown, and the hay mostly made in the cock, in good weath- 

 er, so as to retain most of the leaves and heads, and green 

 appearance, I have never known it to produce either cough 

 or heaves. But I prefer it to any other kind of hay, I cut 

 on my farm, for horses. Perhaps if a horse was kept 

 steadily at hard work, some other kind of hay might be 

 preferable. 



I suppose the prejudice alluded to among a portion of 

 our farmers, and others, is co-extensive with our countr}-, — 

 or, at least, as far and wide as horses arc kept and stabled ; 

 for, in August, 1852, Mr. Ewbank, then Commissioner of 

 Patents, issued printed circulars to almost every section 

 of the Union, propounding a series of questions on rural 

 affairs. One of those questions was, "Does your experi- 

 ence show that red clover is injurious to horses?"' By re- 

 ferring to the answers to the above query in the Patent 



