340 MANUAL OF MODERN FARRIERY. 



kiy ; but a waggon or dray-horse will require about forty 

 pounds weight daily, in proportions as above. The horse 

 having consumed the above quantity of food, requires none 

 during the night, and it would be proper to keep his rack 

 without hay. 



Some horses which are greedy feeders swallow their pease 

 and oats without being properly chewed, and much of both 

 pass through the stomach and intestines without undergoing 

 any change ; indeed this is the case to a certain extent 

 with all horses ; 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 273. Slow feeding is of much importance, 

 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 propor- 

 tional quantity of bruised oats and beans added, and mea- 

 sured 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 



