<)6 DIET FOR RACERS AND HUNTERS. 



■disorder the kidneys. Hay must be free from injmnous herbs, 

 have been well made, quite sweet, and grown on good strong 

 land. The latter is important, as no matter how sweet and good 

 hay may appear, if it is grown on gravelly light land it is not fit 

 for the race horse. Many careful trainers never change the 

 ground for their hay, but constantly procure it from ground that 

 they have found to be suitable. All agree that the best hay for 

 the purpose is grown on well drained clay, rather than on light 

 land. Black Tartar oats, with their small berry, pass the bowels 

 more pleasantly than any large berried oats. They should be 

 mixed with an equal bulk of chaff, which is best cut from good, 

 bright, sweet wheaten or oaten hay {01), and with one-sixth of their 

 Aveight of good old crushed beans. White peas are used by some 

 trainers instead of beans, but their effect ou the kidneys is often 

 bad, so that we should always prefer beans. The wheaten, or 

 oaten hay chaflF, will keep the bowels in better working order than 

 meadow hay chaff, and with the proportion of chaff to corn which 

 we recommend, no large quantity of hay need be given. A little 

 bran, boiled barley, a carrot, or a nibble at grass, will keep the 

 bowels open if there is a tendency to costiveness. Have nothing 

 to do with physic, which only weakens and disorders the bowels 

 of either man or horse. 



129. — Getting a hunter into condition for his season's work 

 does not differ very much from the training of a race horse. 

 His condition is not so extreme, and is expected to last longer. 

 He is allowed to carry a little more fat, but it should not be 

 much. He may be allowed a little more hay, and if he will eat 

 lOlbs. of black Tartar oats, and five pounds of crushed old beans, 

 it is better to keep him regularly eating that, than to risk putting 

 him off his feed by trying to get him to eat more. 



130. — If inclined to get too fat he may be sweated in the 

 same way as the race horse, and he may get nearly the same 

 amount of walking and galloping before his work begins ; but in 

 the season he will get quite enough galloping at his work, and 

 his walking exercise should not exceed six miles a day, when the 

 intervals between his work are not longer than three or four days. 

 But this must be regulated according to the very different amount 



