IQO BOAHD OF AGRICULTURE. 



long journey, he will get hot feet, and inflammation will set 

 in.; but do not let the owner of such a horse say that it is 

 owing to the shoeing. It is not : it is owing to the " pound- 

 ing " of the horse. 



Question. What would you do to prevent the fever? 



Dr. Hunt. The first time I went to the stable after put- 

 ting him into his stall, I should examine his feet ; and, if I 

 found them hot, I would cool them with cold water, just as 

 I would apply cold water to my own hand. I should bathe 

 them, and, if that was not enough, I would put a cold pack 

 around them ; and, when I had brought the temperature to 

 the natural state, I should leave the horse. If the fever 

 came in again, I should repeat the process, until the season 

 got by when we ruin our horses, which is largely in the 

 spring of the year. 



Mr. Hutchinson of Sutton. I believe that the shoeing 

 of horses and oxen is a necessary evil. They have got to be 

 shod forward to go on our rough roads. They do not come 

 into the world shod ; and, if they could have their own way, I 

 do not believe they would have any iron nailed on their feet. 

 I have a mare, eight or nine years old, which I raised, and 

 which I use for a family horse, that has never had a shoe 

 on behind, except in specially icy times in winter: I am 

 obliged then to keep her shod. I have never known her to 

 take a misstep behind when the shoes were off, though she 

 has when the shoes were put on behind, from a pinching 

 shoe. The doctor says, that when horses come in, after 

 standing in snow and slush, their feet are feverish. I would 

 ask. Is it not the shoe that does it ? Is it not the shoe that 

 makes the horse ball up? Is it not the shoe that holds 

 water, and produces this cold and this fever ? I believe, as 

 I said in the first place, that shoeing is a necessary evil, and 

 that an immense amount of damage to horses is done by 

 shoeing. I do not believe that every man -uho pretends to 

 Ivnow how to shoe a horse does know how. 



There was one point in the essay in regard to breeding 

 horses, as to which I can state a fact which has come under 

 my observation. I raised a pair of colts from a mare by the 

 same horse. The first foal had not the slightest resemblance 

 to the mare. The next year I put her to the same horse, 

 and you could not see a sign of the horse in the foal : it was 

 all mare. I never saw two colts so unlike. 



