412 AMERICAN FARMER'S HORSE BOOK. 



digested in the stomach. Grinding into meul remedies this 

 difficulty entirely. 



Corn is, in many ways, very objectionable as food for the 

 horse. It is a gross, heavy diet, very heating to the blood, 

 and having a strong^ tendency to the rapid creation of a 

 lymph and fat that is never sound and healthy. It is the 

 fruitful source of more diseases than all other kinds of un- 

 healthy diet combined. It generates a list of disorders quite 

 unknown in those countries where it is not fed to the horse 

 at all, and many others that are common to the horse of 

 all civilized countries manifest a malignity and fatality in 

 America characteristic of them in no other land. 



The horse can hardly ever be well when under full feed- 

 ing of corn, which, however excellent for fattening hogs, is 

 not the diet for a horse. The horse's structure is dift'erent, 

 in many respects, from that of the hog, and the effects of 

 high feeding are not the same upon both. Suddenly-formed 

 flesh is never solid or healthy in the case of the horse ; and. 

 our experience has taught us to regard corn as the cause of 

 more difficulty and disease in veterinary practice, in some 

 parts of America, than all other circumstances combined. 

 Hundreds of young horses and colts, and many of them 

 splendid specimens of the stock- raiser's success and skill, 

 have we seen ruined by overfeeding with corn. 



While writing' these pages, a case is before us showing 

 the evils of gorging a young horse with corn to put him in 

 condition for sale. It is but a few days since that we were 

 called upon to see a fine, young horse, in Petersburg, Boone 

 County, Kentucky, valued at three hundred and fifty dollars, 

 and actually sold for that sum, the animal to be delivered in 

 a few days. In one of his eyes the water had a cream-col- 

 ored appearance, and the other showed unmistakeable signs 

 of disease. We bled him ; but with a good fleam and a 

 heavy blow from an unusually large stick, barely succeeded 

 in penetrating the jugular vein. His skin was as hard and 

 thick as the hide of a bull. 



This horse had been sufi:ering from a cataneous (skin) fever 



