184 



ELEMENTS OF FARM PRACTICE 



3. If a man spends 1 hour per day caring for horses, how much 

 time will he spend in a year? How much time is this per horse? How 

 much is this labor worth at 14c. per hour? 



FEEDING 



Feed is the greatest general expense in keeping a horse. 

 This fact and the fact that there are many different ways of 

 feeding and kinds of feed make it evident that in the feeding 

 of horses is a great opportunity for waste or saving. The 

 average cost of feed (hay or grain) for a farm work horse 

 has been found by the Minnesota Experiment Station to 

 be about $50.00 per year. If one is keeping several horses, 

 there is an expenditure sufficiently large to be worthy of 

 consideration. 



Concentrated Food. — A horse has but one stomach 



and that is not 

 nearly so large as 

 the stomach of a 

 cow. On this ac- 

 count a horse can 

 not eat as much 

 roughage (hay and 

 fodder) as a cow, 

 and must have a 

 larger proportion of 

 concentrated feed, 

 as corn, oats, etc., 

 and horses have 

 less time in which 

 to eat than cattle. 

 A horse at work is 

 busy for about ten hours each day, and has only the night 

 in which to eat less concentrated feeds. Four pounds of 

 oats, which is a fairly good feed for a horse, contains .42 

 lbs. of protein, 2.0 lbs. of carbohydrates and .15 lbs. of fat. 

 Four pounds of timothy hay contains .11 lbs. of protein, 

 1.72 lbs. of carbohydrates and .06 lbs. of fat. A horse can 

 eat 4 lbs. of oats in ten to twenty minutes, while it would 

 take him about an hour to eat four pounds of hay. 



At noon a work horse seldom has a chance to eat as 

 much as he wants; but, if he has a good feed of grain, he 



Figure 78. — Horses at work. 



