HYGIENE, UNSOUNDNESS, DISEASE. 245 



farm animals— not merely horses alone— are 

 housed should be amply ventilated, with ade- 

 quate provision for the egress of the foul air 

 and the ingress of the fresh air from outdoors. 

 I can well remember in my early days in the 

 West when stables were shells and the blizzards 

 fierce. The horses which lived and grew old 

 in those miserable sheds throve and worked 

 and were healthier than their pampered rel- 

 atives of today, which are kept in barns which 

 are palaces in comparison to those old prairie 

 shacks. Horses will stand a great degree of 

 cold without injury. 



Provide free ventilation, shutting off draughts 

 of course. Rather let the barn be cold and 

 freely ventilated, so that the supply of pure 

 air is constant, and use blankets on the horses, 

 than coop them up in close premises where the 

 air that has been breathed once must be 

 breathed over and over again. Systems of ven- 

 tilation for stock stables of all kinds have been 

 brought to the point of perfection. No farmer 

 has longer an excuse for keeping his animals in 

 foul quarters. On the whole I do not favor 

 underground or bank stables for horses. I 

 would rather have them up on the level. Bank 

 barns are usually dark and damp. S'anlight 

 and oft-changed air are the great destroyers 

 of filth germs. It has been stated before in a 

 previous chapter, but it will bear repetition: 

 stable litter, outside of the dirt of the city 



