138 FOOD. 



• 



of tlie horse is emptied in a few hours ; and if he is suffered to remain 

 hungry much beyond his accustomed time, he will afterwards devour his 

 food so voraciously as to distend the stomach and endanger an attack of 

 staggers. When this disease appears in the farmer's stable, he may 

 attribute it to various causes ; the true one, in the majority of instances, 

 is irregularity in feeding. When extra work is required from the animal, 

 the system of management is often injudicious, for a double feed is put 

 before him, and as soon as he has swallowed it he is started. It would be 

 far better to give him a double feed on the previous evening, which would 

 be digested before he is wanted, and then he might set out in the morn- 

 ing after a very small portion of corn has been given to him, or perhaps 

 only a little hay. One of the most successful methods of enabling a horse 

 to get well through a long journey is to give him only a little at a time 

 while on the road, and at night to indulge him with a double feed of corn 

 and a full allowance of beans. 



Water. — This is a part of stable management little regarded by the 

 farmer. He lets his horses loose morning and night, and they go to the 

 nearest pond or brook and drink their fill, and no harm results, for they 

 obtain that kind of water which nature designed them to have, in a 

 manner prepared for them by some unknown influence of the atmosphere, 

 as well as by the deposition of many sahne admixtures. The difference 

 between hard and soft water is known to everyone. In hard water soap 

 will curdle, vegetables vnW not boil soft, and the saccharine matter of the 

 malt cannot be fully obtained in the process of brewing. There is nothing 

 in which the different effect of hard and soft water is so evident as in the 

 Btomach and digestive organs of the hoi-se. Hard water, drawn fresh 

 from the well, Avill assuredly make the coat of a horse unaccustomed to it 

 Btare, and it will not unfrequently gripe and otherwise injure him. In- 

 stinct or experience has made even the horse himself conscious of this, 

 for he Avill never drink hard water if he has access to soft, and he will 

 leave the most transparent and pure water of the well for a river, although 

 the stream may be turbid, and even for the muddiest pool. 



Some trainers have so much fear of hard or strange Avater, that they 

 carry with them to the different courses the water that the animal has 

 been accustomed to di*ink, and that which they know agrees ^vith it. 



He is injured, however, not so much by the hardness of the well-water 

 as by its coldness — particularly by its coldness in summer, and when it is 

 many degTees below the temperature of the atmosphere. The water in 

 the brook and the pond being warmed by long exposu.re to the air, as well 

 as having become soft, the horse di'inks freely of it ■without danger. 



If the horse were watered three times a day, and especially in summer, 

 he would often be saved from the sad torture of thirst, and from many a 

 disease. Whoever has observed the eagerness with which the over-worked 

 hoi'se, hot and tired, plunges his muzzle into the pail, and the difficulty of 

 stopping him until he has drained the last di'op, may form some idea of 

 what he had previously suffered, and will not wonder at the violent 

 spasms, and inflammation, and sudden death, that often result. 



There is a prejudice in the minds of many persons against the horse 

 being fairly supplied with water. They think that it injures his wind, 

 and disables him for quick and hard work. If he is galloped, as he too 

 often is, immediately after drinking, his wind may be irreparably injured ; 

 but if he were oftener suffered to satiate his thirst at the intervals of rest, 

 he would be happier and better. It is a fact unsuspected by those who 

 have not carefully observed the horse, that if he has frequent access to 

 water he will not drink so much in the course of the day, as another will 

 do, who, to cool his parched mouth, swallows as fast as he can, and knows 

 uot when to stop. 



