1006 PRACTICE OF AGRICULTURE. TAur ill. 



are wasted, it generates fevers, and wastes the strength and spirits. All horses prefer soft Avater, and as 

 nature is unerring, there is no doubt but that it is the most wholesome. As some horses drink quicker 

 than others, it is not a good custom to take riding horses to a pond, unless at night, wlien the quantity 

 cannot injure them ; or when not intended for early work the next morning, as hunting, &c. 



6698. The necessary quantity of water for a horse should be regulated by circumstances, as the weather, 

 the work, &c. In common cases, a large horse requires rather more than the half of a large stable pail 

 full twice in the day. At night a full pail should be allowed. Horses should never be galloped after 

 drinking ; it has destroyed thousands, by gripes, inflammations, and broken wind. This custom also uses 

 horses to expect they are to run away directly they are accidentally watered at any time. Others, expect- 

 ing they are to be fatigued with a gallop, will avoid drinking at all. The most that should ever be done, 

 is to suffer no horse to drink his fill at a river or pond; but having given him half what is necessary, walk 

 him ten minutes, and then give him all that is required, and walk him again. 



Sect. XV. Stabling and Grooming of Horses. 



6697. The stabling of horses is likewise a most important point in their management, the more so as 

 being wholly a deviation from nature ; hence, under the most judicious management, it is liable to produce 

 some departure from health ; and as sometimes managed, is most hurtful to it. Clothing, dressing, or 

 combing, and exercise, are also highly important. 



6ti98. Every stable should be large, cool, and aii-y. It is too common to suppose that warmth is so con- 

 genial to horses, that they cannot be kept too hot ; but there is reason to suppose that many of the diseases 

 of horses are attributable tc the enervating effects of unnatural heat, and of an air breathed and rebreathed 

 over again. Blaine says. Is it not alike repugnant to reason and experience, to expect to keep animals in 

 health, that from stables heated to sixty degrees, and further protected by warm clothing, are first stripped, 

 and then at once exposed to a temperature at the freezing point ? If it be argued that habit and exercise 

 render these less hurtful, it will be easy to answer that their original hardihood is lost by confinement 

 and artificial treatment ; and that neither does exercise always tend to obviate the effects of this sudden 

 change : for our best carriage horses, and hackneys also, have often to wait hours in roads and streets the 

 convenience of their owners, or the pleasure of the groom. 



6699. The heat of a stable should be regulated by a thermometer, and the heat shown by it should never 

 exceed 50'^ of Fahrenheit in winter, or &'-l'^ or 63 in summer. To renew the air, the stable should be well 

 ventilated; and which is best done by trunks or tubes passing from the ceiling through the roof. 



67(^0. A stable should not only be well ventilated, but it should be light also ; and the windows should be 

 so constructed as to admit light and air, without producing a current of wind on the bodies of the horses. 

 Darkened stables are very hurtful to the eyesj neither do they, as was formerly supposed at Newmarket, 

 tend to the condition or rest of a horse. 



6701. A stable should have a close ceiling to keep the dust and dirt from.the hay-loft from entering the 

 horse's eyes. It is also necessary to prevent the ammoniacal gases from ascending and lodging in the hay. 

 It is preferable that the hay-loft be altogether removed from over the stable; and if a very high ceiling 

 even to the roof were substituted, it would be for the benefit of the horses. 



6702. The form of the rack and manger should be attended to. Sloping racks are disadvantageous, as 

 encouraging dust in the eyes. They should therefore be upright, and by no means so high as they usually 

 are, by which the head and neck are put injuriously on the stretch. As a proof that this is unpleasant to 

 horses, many of then: first pull out all the hay, and then leisurely eat it. The manger should be wide at 

 the bottom, and of a proper height : care should be taken that no splinters are present to endanger the 

 lips, nose, and mouth. The halter reins should, in good stables, be suffered to run within a groove within 

 the manger post, to prevent the rein entangling the legs. It is become the practice in some stables appro- 

 priated to post, stage-waggon, and other hard-worked horses, to abandon hay-racks altogether ; but the 

 hay being placed on the ground before the horse encourages him to lie down and eat it; by which much 

 rest is afforded to the weary limbs, and much improvement to the feet 



6703. 2"he stalls of a stable should be wide. Strains in the back, and sometimes even worse evils, are the 

 consequence of the standings being too narrow. Bails are objectionable from the ease with which horses 

 can kick over them ; and also from the quickest feeder getting roost food, when several horses stand toge- 

 ther bailed. 



6704. The acclivity of the stalls is a matter of much dispute : when too much raised, as in dealers' 

 stables, they put the back sinews on the stretch, and fatigue horses much. It is more natural that they 

 should be even ; or that a very slight slope only be allowed to carry off the urine. The best mode, how- 

 ever, of carrying off the urine is by means of a small grating to each stall, communicating with a cess- 

 pool without doors, which should be closed up, that a current of air may not come through the grating. 

 Such a contrivance will effectually carry off the water, and prevent the volatile alkali of the urine from 

 impregnating the air around. For the same reasons, the dung should be removed, if possible, wholly 

 without the stable as soon as dropped ; for the exhalations from that are also ammoniacal, and con- 

 sequently hurtful. To this cause alone we may attribute many diseases, particularly the great tendency 

 stabled horses have to become affected in the eyes. The pungency of this effluvia is familiar to every one 

 on entering a close stable in the morning, and when the long-soiled litter is removed, it is absolutely 

 unbearable. 



6705. The litter of horses should be kept dry and sweet, and should be often removed. When it is 

 suffered to remain, under the notion of making better dung, the horse may be ruined ; neither does the 

 manure benefit as is supposed ; for when it is removed to the dung pit, the close confinement does it more 

 good than the open exposure in the stable, when it parts with its salts, on which its properties as manure 

 partly depend. 



6706. Horses should not stand on litter during the day, although very generally suffered to do so. Litter 

 is thought to save the shoes and even the feet, by preventing the uneven surface of the stable from hurt- 

 ing them : but it holds the urine ; it injures the feet ; and is very apt to encourage swelling at the heels : 

 as we know by removing it, when they immediately subside. A little litter may be strewed behind to 

 obviate the effect of kicking, or the splashing of urine in mares. 



6707. The clothing of horses is apt to be carried to as erroneous an extent as the heat of their stables. 

 "When horses go out in cold weather, and are intended to have merely a long walking exercise, then cloth- 

 ing is very proper : but it must be evident, that when taken clothed from a stable and exercised briskly 

 so as to produce perspiration, it is erroneous ; for not only are the clothes wetted and thus liable to give 

 cold, but the horse is unfitted to go out afterwards with a saddle only. Saddle horses kept in condition 

 stand clothed in a kersey sheet, and girted with a broad roller, with occasionally the addition of a quarter, 

 piece; the breast-plate is sometimes put on when going out to exercise ; the hood is used to race horses 

 only, except in case of sickness. All horses, except racers, are best without clothing in the summer 

 season ; at the most a linen sheet only should be allowed to avoid the dust and flies. 



6708. The grooining or dressing of horses is generally thus practised : Having tied up the horse's 

 head, take a currycomb, and curry him all over his body, to raise the dandriff or scurf, beginning first at 

 his neck, holding the left cheek of the head-stall in your left hand, and curry him from the setting on of 

 his head, all along his neck, to his shoulder, and so go all over his body to the buttocks, down to his hocks; 

 then change your hands, and curry him before on his breast, and laying your right arm over his back, 

 join your right side to his left, and curry him all under his belly to his chest, and so all over very well, 

 from the knees and shoulders upwards : after that, go to the far side, and do in like manner. Then take 

 a dead horse's tail, or a dusting-cloth of cotton, and strike that dust away which the curry-comb has 



