226 STABLES. 



The chief conditions which regulate the form, size and 

 construction of these compartments are : 



1. Comfort and Safety of the Horses. In the interests of 

 horses, I strongly advise the use, when practicable, of loose 

 boxes in preference to that of stalls ; because the former, 

 owing to the increased liberty they afford, are more comfort- 

 able and more healthy for horses than the latter, and are free 

 from the dangers connected with tying-up and leaving open 

 the entrance of the compartment. In a stall, a horse is 

 obliged to accept a constrained position which must be more 

 or less irksome to him, and which renders him liable to " filled 

 legs," thrush, and other ailments, especially of the hind limbs, 

 from want of exercise, and from not being able to change the 

 position of the feet with sufficient facility. The presence of 

 the tying-up chain or rope, whether single or double, is not 

 only a source of discomfort to a horse, especially when he is 

 lying down, and of danger to him by his getting a foreleg 

 over the chain or rope, but it is also an inducement to 

 cribbing. Besides, a horse is apt, particularly when he 

 hangs back in his stall, to inflict injury on his neighbour or 

 neighbours or to get kicked by them, in the event of there 

 being an occupied stall on one or both sides of him, to say 

 nothing of the risk of his kicking a confiding passer-by. 

 Severe accidents from being kicked by a neighbour, and from 

 getting a leg over a tying-up chain or rope, are by no means 

 unfrequent. 



Stalls which are separated by swinging bails, have the 

 special disadvantage that horses in them are apt to hurt them- 

 selves by getting over the bails, and to injure their neigh- 

 bours by kicking sideways. 



2. Economy of Space. At first glance we might think that 

 if a stall was big enough for a horse to be tied up in, it would 

 be sufficiently large for him to be left loose in. We must, 

 however, bear in mind that as the side divisions of a box 



