258 LIVE STOCK MANAGEMENT. 



draft horses should have the equivalent of five or six miles 

 walk each day, while light horses require from seven to 

 eight to keep them in right condition. In many instances 

 where it is impossible to have the horses walked each day, 

 an open lot is used to provide exercise. This is not so good 

 but it is much more economical of labor, thus the reason for 

 practicing the same. The exercising lot should be long and 

 rather narrow, so as to prevent the stallion from running 

 in a circle, which so often causes him to slip and fall or 

 otherwise injure himself. With the long lot he will have 

 ample opportunity of extending himself and at the same time 

 little or no chance of accident. The fence around such a lot 

 should be tight for one-half its height (about four feet) 

 and slat fencing above so that the stallion may see all that 

 is going on on the outside, thus eliminating fretting and 

 worry on his part. 



The main point in the stable management is to feed, 

 groom and exercise so as to keep the horse in the very 

 highest possible pitch of strength and vigor. A healthy horse 

 needs nothing but good food, pure air, plenty of exercise, 

 with due attention to cleanliness and regularity in feeding 

 and watering. Some horsemen confine their horses to stalls 

 in which they are tied, but the large majority use box stalls. 

 A box stall twelve feet wide by eighteen or twenty feet long 

 with a ground floor serves an excellent purpose. There should 

 be a manger or rack for hay; in some instances a box well 

 fitted in the corner is used for grain, while many prefer that 

 the feed boxes should be entirely detached from the stall 

 to be removed as soon as the horse is done eating. The hay 

 being fed on the floor in one corner of the stall, thus leaving 

 nothing in the way of projections such as boxes, racks, man- 

 gers, sharp angles, etc., upon which a spirited horse might 

 injure himself. If, in addition to these precautions, the sides 

 of the stalls be lined all around doors and all with stout 

 boards, standing out at the bottom about eighteen inches 

 from the wall, and sloping upwards and toward the wall for 

 a height of three and a half feet, you will have a stall in 

 which it will be next to impossible for a horse to injure his 

 tail or mane by rubbing. In such a stall the stallion should 

 be loose and the owner may rest assured that the liability 

 to injury is reduced to a minimum. 



The stallion's feet require careful attention. They should 

 be cleaned out every day with a foot hook to prevent foul 



