314 Feeds and Feeding. 



injections of warm water to which soap has been added. In all 

 cases of derangement, at once lessen the amount of food for both 

 dam and foal, since nothing aids nature more at such times than 

 to reduce the work of the digestive tract. 



495. Feeding the foal before weaning. Horsemen who are 

 anxious to see the foals getting on, frequently induce them when 

 quite young to take nourishment other than that supplied by the 

 dam, the supplementary feeding often starting two months from 

 birth. By placing the feed box from which the dam eats her grain 

 a little raised from the ground, the foal will early begin nibbling 

 from the mother's supply and soon acquire a taste for grain. 

 This habit can be strengthened in no better way than that de- 

 scribed by Splan, l which is as follows: " With the colts all out to 

 grass and doing well, it is time to separate the oldest of them from 

 the younger and commence feeding them grain, which is done in 

 this way: Build a pen in some suitable place which is the most 

 convenient, making it high enough so that the mare will not try 

 to jump it, and have the space from the ground to the bottom rail 

 or board sufficient to allow the foal to pass under. Put in a handy 

 gate or bars, then an ample feed trough. Lead your mares and 

 foals singly into this enclosure and let them eat together two or 

 three times and they will soon learn where the food is. Take out 

 the mares, shut up the gate, leave the colts in. Keep a good sup- 

 ply of oats there, and you will find the foals there regularly run- 

 ning in and out getting their rations. To induce the dam to 

 loiter about this place, keep a large lump of rock salt near it and 

 occasionally a mess of oats, and there is no further trouble. In 

 this way, at weaning time, which is at the age of five months, the 

 colts have learned to eat, and the result is that when they are 

 taken away from their dams they do not miss them so much. 77 



496. The Palo Alto system. The method employed on the 

 Stanford farm in teaching foals to eat, studied by the writer in 

 1892, carries with it also handling and breaking them to lead 

 by the halter. At this farm each mare with foal is kept in 

 a separate box-stall at night, while during the day two mares 

 with foals occupy for a time the same paddock j the foals thus 



1 Life with the Trotters, p. 424. 



