HUNTERS 201 



so, is the quality of the hay supplied to horses doing 

 fast work. A diversity of opinion exists as to 

 whether old meadow, or clover hay is the better, 

 but in meadow-hay there is a greater variety of 

 herbage, which should be an advantage. It 

 should be grown on up-land, and the important 

 part is that the grass should be cut when still full 

 of sap, before it has ripened into woody fibre, and 

 that the weather conditions should be suitable 

 for making it. If there is plenty of sun, a 

 moderate amount of wind, an absence of rain, 

 and the hay is put into stack so that it will sweat 

 just enough, and not too much, the hay should 

 remain a green colour, with a sweet aromatic 

 odour. On such hay horses will thrive heartily, 

 and they eat it with avidity. If not enough 

 sweated hay is soft to handle, and horses do not 

 care for it ; while if too much sweated, and dark 

 in colour, with the scent of Cavendish tobacco, 

 though horses will eat it greedily, it is not good 

 for their digestions. If stacked when wet there 

 will be mouldly streaks, which may affect the 

 hay for a considerable distance, and which is both 

 distasteful to the horses and prejudicial. 



Meadow-hay should consist of the finest grasses 

 with but few of the tall, coarse ones in it, which 

 are more suitable for cows than horses. It 

 should be full of clover, sweet vernal, crested 

 dogstail, and perennial rye-grass, with foxtail, 

 timothy, and yarrow. The cock's-foot does not 

 make good hay for horses, being too coarse, 

 though it affords a valuable bite in the spring, 

 growing before the others. The '' barometer " of 

 the haymaker is the crested dogstail, and when 

 that comes into flower is the time to cut the grass 

 — if the weather is fine. All the grasses flower 



