F 



GENERAL MANAGEMENT OF HORSES. 



Section A. — Foods. i 



OR the due maintenance of health it is necessary that food 

 of the best quaUty procurable be purchased, inferior 

 fodder being useless for feeding purposes, and very often 

 a fruitful cause of illness. The enormous amount of foreign 

 feeding materials coming into this country is far in excess of 

 what it should be if horsekeepers were wider awake to the 

 immense superiority of home-grown produce. It bears no com- 

 parison to that grown in our own country, and as the best is the 

 cheapest, the writer strongly recommends the sole use, if 

 possible, of home-grown forage. 



If one takes the trouble to examine the mixed " chopped 

 food " doled out to the horses belonging to many of the large 

 studs in this country, it at once becomes evident that the oats 

 are very small, shrunken, and perhaps bleached ; that the beans 

 and peas are hard, shrivelled and miserably deficient in sub^ 

 stance, wliilst the bran is dark coloured, its flakelets small, and 

 that it is very deficient in adherent flour, and lacking the odour 

 so characteristic of the best samples of bran ; in fact, the bran 

 one often finds in mixed fodder is only fit for bran poultices. 



The cut hay is over-dried and coarse. It must not be 

 understood that these remarks apply to the fodder sold by all 

 forage dealers, but it does to some of them. 



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