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THE GENESEE FAEMEE. 



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ON FEEDING HORSES, AND PREVENTING GLANDERS AND FARCY. 



A DISTINGUISHED Veterinary surgeon, Professor Dun, of the Edinburgh Veterinary Col- 

 lege, calls attention to the following errors in the dieting of farm horses, Avhich are not 

 less common in this country than in Scotland. 



1st. Much too long an interval is allowed to intervene between the times of feeding. 

 Horses are frequently worked six hours consecutively, during which time they receive no 

 food whatever. This practice has been found by experience to be prejudicial to their 

 health, inducing debility and predisposing to diseases of the digestive system. The 

 natural habits and digestive organs of the horse alike prove that he is not designed for 

 long ftists ; as the smallness of his stomach indicates the necessity of supplying it with 

 comparatively small quantities of aliment at short intervals. When at liberty, he eats 

 during twenty out of the twenty-four hours. This natural habit may be modified, but 

 pains should be taken not to run into the opposite extreme. A horse or mule when at 

 work through the day on the farm, should have some nutritious food every five hours at 

 the outside, if the purpose is not to impair his constitutional powers. When a plow 

 team is taken up early in the morning, and expected to work till noon before regular 

 feeding, it is the present practice of the best Scotch farmers to give each horse a lunch 

 of a pound or more of oat-meal or bean-meal cake between nine and ten o'clock. Some 

 prefer to mix oat and bean or pea-meal, Avhich is wet with water and " fired" or baked ; 

 the cooking enables the digestive organs to render the nutritive elements at once availa- 

 ble for the support of the exactions of labor. Dr. Dun is acquainted with several farmers 

 " who give these cakes whenever the work is severe and the hours long, and all of them 

 agree that their horses are now in much better heart and condition, and less frequently 

 attacked by indigestion and cholic, than they were when subjected to protracted absti- 

 nence, and without any intermediate meal." 



2d. Food may be improper on account of over quantity, excess of nuritiveness, or bad 

 quality. By taking too large a quantity of food into the stomach at once, the immediate 

 bad consequences may be wind cholic, inflammation of the bowels and the surrounding 

 membranes, a founder ; and occasionally, the swelling of food eaten dry causes a rupture 

 of the stomach or intestines. An animal scantily fed from' day to day, sometimes gets 

 loose and finds access to a bag or bin of gi-ain, and being hungry, gorges himself almost 

 to suffocation ; or a bad servant may feed to excess, and out of all reason. We have 

 frequently wondered why grain or water taken into the stomach of a horse should so 

 immediately afioct his feet, producing the inflammation called laminitis — an inflamed 

 state of the extreme vascular membrane or lamina of the hoof. Let us see if we can get 

 at the philosophy of a common founder. A translation of a positive disease from one 

 part of the system to another, by what doctors call metastasis, is common enough ; but 

 a horse may be foundered where there is no positive disorder in the digestive organs, 

 and only an unnatural irritation from the presence of water or food improperly taken 

 into the stomach. The exercise and heating to which he has been subjected on the 

 highway or elsewhere, have brought the vascular and tender parts within the hoof into 

 a condition approximating inflammation, before either water or food is swallowed. The 

 antecedent hard service of the feet is a material fact in the case ; for without previous 

 driving, and too often hard driving, an acute founder is seldom seen. A sudden shock 

 is inflicted on the nervous system in the stomacb, which is sound, and its force shatters 

 first, not the sound stomach, but the heated, enfeebled, and partially inflamed feet, which 

 are connected with the stomach by abundant nerves. If the feet of a horse be covered 

 with water this revulsion from the stomach to the lamina of the hoofs seldom occurs to 

 an injurious degree. This brief explanation indicates the propriety of bleeding, and let- 

 ting a recently foundered horse stand in a stream of water to cool his feet. Give him 

 rest and physic. Proper feeding implies the use of neither too much nor too little grain, 



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