HOW TO FEED A HORSE. 125 



too much to say, that a foal, treated thus, will be, at two 

 years old, the equal of any three year old, allowed to take 

 his chance, without any food but that furnished by his 

 dam from her ordinary commons, or picked up b}^ himself, 

 in his summer pasture or winter straw yard. 



Scarcely inferior should be the pains taken with a good 

 half-bred mare, or Canadian, or Norman, in foal to a thor- 

 ough-bred, and expected to produce an offspring of supe- 

 rior character, as a trotter, a carriage-horse, or a roadster ; 

 and we should clearly and decidedly recommend the giv- 

 ing of oats, in small quantities, to both the parent and the 

 young of this second description. 



Where ordinary horses are concerned it must be a ques- 

 tion, in the main, of dollars and cents ; for it is clear that, if 

 a man be breeding from such parents, and under such cir- 

 cumstances that he only expects to realize a hundred 

 dollars, more or less, for his colt or filly, at three years old, 

 there will not be much margin for superfluous expenditures, 

 in the way of early feed or nurture. Still, it is certain that 

 every dollar laid out on the pregnant mare, and on the 

 nursing mare and her foal, will return tenfold to the breeder, 

 in the real goodness of the animal. 



We do not believe that it is ever worth the while to breed 

 inferior or second-rate animals of any kind ; but that, 

 whatever the kind be, it is the most profitable to breed the 

 best of that kind, and so to keep and care for it, that the 

 creature, when bred, shall attain its perfect standard and 

 full development, and be, in itself, the best attainable speci- 

 men and standard of its kind. 



This cannot be done, whether the animal is to be an 

 Eclipse, a Flora Temple, a clever roadster, a noble express 

 teamster, a showy carriage -horse, an officer's charger, or a 

 first-rate farm animal, unless it be well-fed and well cared 

 for while it is growing. 



