FEEDING 311 



the consequence is, that the animal is deprived of 

 their nutritive qualities. Horses which do not chew 

 their food, can easily be detected by examining their 

 dung, when it will be found to contain much grain in 

 its perfect condition. When this is the case, the 

 grain and pulse should be bruised, and also mixed 

 with a portion of chaff, or cut hay and straw, which 

 he cannot swallow without chewing. Besides deriving 

 all the benefit of the nutritive qualities of the food, 

 the animal is prevented from bolting his food too 

 quickly and overloading his stomach, and rendering 

 him unfit for being used immediately after feeding, 

 as we have already explained when treating of the 

 stomach, page 243. Slow feeding is of much im- 

 portance, because in the lengthened process a greater 

 portion of saliva is carried into the stomach with 

 the food, which materially assists in the process of 

 digestion. 



Machines have been constructed for cutting hay 

 into chaff. Meadow hay, clover, wheat, barley, and 

 oat straw are cut into pieces of a little more than half 

 an inch in length, and the whole well incorporated, 

 and the proportional quantity of bruised oats and 

 beans added, and measured out at meal-times to the 

 animal. If the chaff is slightly wetted immediately 

 before feeding, the horse is enabled easier to chew it. 

 With some horses the bruised grain produces scour- 

 ing ; when this is the case, it must of course be 

 given whole, but this very rarely happens with 

 bruised grain when mixed with chaff, as we have 

 above recommended. Horses that are driven rapidly 

 in harness are more liable to be purged with bruised 

 grain than those of slow draught ; and it has been 

 found that diminishing the proportion of straw-chaff, 

 and increasing the quantity of hay in the proportion 



