CHAPTEE XL 



FEEDING SICK HORSES. 



When a horse is unfit to work on account of lameness or 

 sickness, he no longer requires the full ordinary working 

 diet— in fact, such a diet is generally quite unsuitable. 

 A horse rested on account of lameness is usually quite 

 healthy in other respects, and, therefore, if in good con- 

 dition, requires simply a maintenance diet. As described 

 in an earlier chapter (Chapter V.), a horse at rest re- 

 quires only about half the amount of food, reckoned in 

 terms of digestible starch, that a horse at work needs. 

 Further, the food should not contain so high a percentage 

 of protein, or, in other words, the nitrogeneous ratio of 

 the diet may be wider, even down to 1 : 10. At the 

 same time, the animal would not be satisfied with half 

 the bulk of food it had been getting when at work, for 

 the digestive tract needs a certain minimum bulk of food 

 to act upon. Thus it is necessary to reduce the nutritive 

 value of the ration to half that of the working diet, to 

 lessen its protein content, but to feed a larger proportion 

 of the more bulky, less nitrogenous foods to keep up the 

 bulk. These requirements have been kept in mind in 

 arranging the rations suitable for maintenance (p. 47) 

 and these and similar mixtures would be quite suitable 

 for a lame, but otherwise healthy, horse at rest. In many 

 cases a diet of hay with a few pounds of bran is given, 



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