CHAPTEE XVHI. 



FEEDS FOE THE HORSE. 



456. Oats. Horses nurtured on oats show mettle which can- 

 not be reached by the use of any other feeding stuff. (188) Then, 

 too, there is no grain so safe for horse feeding, the animal rarely 

 being seriously injured if by accident or otherwise the groom 

 deals out an over supply. This safety is due in no small measure 

 to the presence of the oat hull, which causes a given weight of 

 grain to possess considerable volume, because of which there is 

 less liability of mistake in measuring out the ration; further, the 

 digestive tract cannot hold a quantity of oat grains sufficient to 

 produce serious disorders. Unless the horse is hard pressed for 

 time or has poor teeth, oats should be fed in the whole condition. 

 Musty oats should be avoided. 



Horsemen generally agree that new oats should not be used, 

 though Boussingault, l conducting extensive experiments with 

 army horses, arrived at the conclusion that new oats do not pos- 

 sess the injurious qualities attributed to them. 



457. Substitutes for oats. According to experiments made 

 at Hohenheim (Germany) and Paris, oats may often be profit- 

 ably replaced by other concentrated and easily digested feeding 

 stuffs for the production of work by horses. Because of their 

 palatability it seems desirable and advantageous not to entirely 

 omit oats from the ration, but only to reduce the allowance to a 

 certain minimum. This is, however, very important at times 

 on account of the high market value of this grain. During 

 feeding experiments at Hohenheim in 1893-94, a horse was fed 

 a daily ration consisting of 6 pounds of meadow hay, 5 pounds of 

 cut straw, 2 pounds of oats, 3 pounds of field beans, 8 pounds of 



1 Ann. de la Sci. Agron., 1884, II, p. 331. 



