TREATMENT OF YEARLINGS. 123 



he will suffer in a very minor degree by comparison with horses 



which have been fatted up for the sale yard. 



There is yet another sanitary arrangement, or sanitary 



possibility we will term it out of deference to those who sit in 



the seat of the scornful, to which we would draw our readers' 



attention. 



In days of yore, when some hundred horses stood in one 



posting stable, ready to be called out at all hours, goats were 



frequently kept as disinjedors^ and they have since been em- 

 ployed with success in several modern racing establishments, 

 notwithstanding the number of artificial disinfectants which 

 have been patented during the last half-century. When a horse 

 goes out of his stall or box, the goat, if allowed so to do, will at 

 once go into it, often jumping into the manger, pulling dovm 

 any hay which may be left in the rack, and consuming such 

 remnants of food as can be found. 



The smell of the goat is an antiseptic, apparently by no 

 means disagreeable to horses, and during the spring months, 

 when our climate is so variable, a strong disinfectant is abso- 

 lutely necessary ; otherwise, as soon as one occupant catches 

 influenza or any other epidemic, it will run through the whole 

 stable. Where forty horses are kept, two or three goats should 

 be about the place ; it will be found that the horses hke them-, 

 and that when illness does occur, the removal of the invalid 

 may suffice to prevent contagion, or that at any rate the chance 

 of its spreading is greatly diminished — to say nothing of the 

 well-known principle that prevention is better than cure. 



The advisability of keeping the Billy goats tethered in yard 

 or paddock Master Billy himself will not be slow to inculcate 

 if allowed to run loose like the kids or she-goats. We need 

 not expatiate on the paramount necessity, now almost univer- 

 sally recognised, of pure water, and clean, well-ventilated stables. 

 Whilst on this topic we may mention drainage, for which so 

 many theories have of late years been laid down and taken up. 

 The system of superficial drainage commends itself as the 

 least troublesome. But it has been frequently adopted without 



