304: A TREATISE ON HORSE-BREEDING. 



milk. Nothing is more certain than that very many chemi- 

 cal agents introduced into the system of the mother pass out 

 largely by the milk. It is an old practice to give a dose of 

 salts or other purgative to the mother, with the view of act- 

 ing on the bowels of the offspring. Poisons, too, taken into 

 the system of the mother, will often pass out in the milk and 

 affect the more susceptible off spring, rather than the less im- 

 pressible nurse. Hence it is that green food that has boen 

 grown under unusual conditions, fodder that has been spoiled 

 in harvesting, impure waters with an excess of decomposing 

 organic matter, and mineral waters containing laxative salts, 

 may appear to act even more severely on the sucking animal 

 than on its dam through which these were derived. The 

 notice of these things is, perhaps, sufficiently suggestive to 

 lead to their correction when they are found to exist. It 

 need only be stated that green food which is actively irri- 

 tant when used alone will often prove harmless when em- 

 ployed in connection with grain or other dry food; but occa- 

 sionally this will fail, and each case must be judged by its 

 own results. 



Confinement in close buildings is inimical to mare and 

 foal alike. In both it induces a relaxed, weakened condition, 

 which lays the system open to health-disturbing causes. The 

 effect on the mare impairs the quality of the milk, and this 

 in its turn reacts on the foal, which, thus placed between 

 two fires, is doubly liable to suffer. But close confinement 

 is too often associated with impure air and filthy surround- 

 ings, and nothing can well be more hurtful to health than 

 this unhygienic combination. After foaling, as before, mares 

 should have the means of taking free exercise, and if in early 

 spring they can not do this in the pasture each ought to have 

 the run of a yard connected with a dry, comfortable shed, 

 where she and her foal mp,y use and develop their locomotive 

 organs and strengthen their constitutions. 



Perhaps nothing is more hurtful to the young than a cold, 

 damp bed. Suddenly transferred from a warm medium to 

 the cold of early spring, it is of no small importance that the 

 young animal should be protected against the excess of cold 

 which comes of damp and evaporation, or even freezing. 



