138 DADDS VETERINARY MEDICINE AND SURGERY. 



tained that parsnips, carrots, turnips, and cabbage, which ccntain 

 from 80 to 90 per cent, of water, require over twice as much time to 

 digest as when the food is free from water. Cabbage, for example, 

 requires twenty hours, and broiled beef-steak only eight, to digest. 

 Turn a cow into a luxuriant pasture of grass or clover, and, after 

 partaking of one or the other, she is liable to become " blown" or 

 "hoven" — tympanitic; the abdomen becomes enormously dis^ 

 tended with gas, (either carbonic acid gas, or sulphurated hydro 

 gen,) and, unless the same be condensed or evacuated, rupture and 

 death are sure to follow. This imperfect digestion and consequent 

 generation of gas is due to the presence of vegetable fluids found in 

 green fodder. Therefore, animals having weak digestive organs, 

 predisposed to flatulency, should have the privilege of watering 

 their own food with salivial fluid. The best diet for such an ani • 

 mal would be " dry feed," composed of ground oats, cracked corn , 

 "fine feed," and a small quantity of sweet hay. On the other 

 hand, a constipated state of the bowels always indicates coarss 

 food ; and in this view the English use chopped straw and coarss 

 bran, with decided advantage. Animals should never be watered 

 immediately before nor after meals ; after the lapse of an hour 

 from feeding time is the best. 



AS REGARDS THE QUANTITY OF FOOD REQUIRED. 



The adult horse does not require so much of the flesh-making 

 principle as the young and growing animal, but he seems to require 

 ( greater variety. The adult merely requires enough to replace 

 l.he waste — the wear and tear of his system. If he obtains more 

 than this, the surplus is either excreted from the body, or else 

 stored up within the same in the form of fat; and every body 

 knows that a fat horse or fat man are not best adapted for a race 

 nor hard labor, but of all others, (except those in a state of de- 

 bility,) they are most subject to acute disease. With the young 

 and growing animal the case is different. Here we require bone, 

 muscle, and nerve. Oats, corn, and pollard furnish the same. 

 The colt obtains from its mother's milk all the elements of its own 

 organization in a concentrated form — all that seems necessary for 

 developing bodily proportions and hereditary traits; therefore, 

 when weaned, the colt must be furnished with the same equivalents 

 in the form of fodder: ground oats, wheat bran, and meal furnish 



