out for a rest. Few farmers know how to 

 care for a horse, or will take any trouble 

 to make him comfortable. It must be 

 remembered, of course, that the city horse, 

 being used to high feed, cannot have all 

 his grain taken away from him, especially 

 if he be an old horse, without falling into 

 a worse condition than his former one. 

 I ' nless he is a young horse in rich pasturage, 

 he must receive some grain every day, and 

 the old horse will need a good deal, per- 

 haps one-half of his usual ration. Another 

 thing to be looked out for is the annoyance 

 from flies and mosquitoes. This is so 

 great, except in farms situated on high 

 groimd, that a horse, especially a city horse, 

 cannot be turned out all day or even all 

 night in a pasture or field without losing 

 more than he would gain. In pastures 

 of northern New England, where the land 

 is at a comparatively high altitude and 

 the nights are cool, horses can be turned 

 out day and night; but within thirty 

 or fifty miles of Boston, in midsummer, 

 there is hardly more than an hour or so, 

 in the whole twenty-four hours, when a 

 horse can be turned out without being 

 driven almost crazy by flies in the daytime, 

 and mosquitoes at night. 



RECONSTRUCTED HORSES 



At the annual Boston Work-Horse 

 Parade in 1910 a new class was estab- 

 lished, — a class not only new in the parade, 

 but ncAcr before gi\'en at any work-horse 

 I)arade or horse-shcnv. This was a class 

 for reconstructed horses, that is, horses 

 run down by neglect or abuse in the hands 

 ol one owner, and restored to health and 

 strength by rest and good treatment in 

 the hands of another. This class furnished 

 some striking examples of wiiat can be 

 done by giving a horse a chance to recuper- 

 ate. One of the horses exhibited w^as a 

 sound animal, but he had been worked hard 

 for eight years, was completely worked 

 out, and was supposed to be worthless. 

 He was bought for a song and restored 

 by three months' rest. Another horse, 

 bought two years before in a positively 

 emaciated condition, was entirely made 

 over by a vacation spent chiefly in a 

 box stall, with plenty of mashes, etc., and 

 within a year was sold for $245. Another, 



bought for .S75, in the Fall, Irom a pro\'ision 

 dealer whose horses are knocked about by 

 boy drivers, was restored to health by a 

 rest, and sold for $300 in the spring. 

 Another horse, only eight years old, sound 

 except for blindness, was bought in the 

 Fall for $15, as he lay in the gutter too weak 

 to get up. He then weighed 1040 pounds; 

 four months afterward he was a strong, 

 powerful animal weighing 1360 pounds. 

 In the appendix will be found se\'eral 

 letters which give some striking illustra- 

 tions of the value of a vacation for work- 

 horses. 



VACATION BY PIECE-MEAL 



One way of giving a horse a vacation 

 is to increase the number of horses at 

 work for any firm or concern, so as to 

 permit each horse to lay off one day out 

 of the six working days, or to work half 

 a day only for one or more working days 

 in the week. For example, suppose a 

 given concern has work enough to keep 

 four three-hundred-dollar horses busy. Let 

 them add one horse to the equipment, so 

 that there will be five horses for the work. 

 This would relieve toil-worn legs and feet 

 and over-strained bodies and digestion, 

 would lessen somewhat the amount of 

 grain required for each horse, and would 

 greatly reduce the annual depreciation 

 in the value of each horse. In this way, 

 it is speaking within bounds to say, that 

 the working life of all the horses would 

 be prolonged from an average of six years 

 to an average of ten years. 



It should be remembered also that a 

 horse in good condition and spirits is far 

 more efficient, and will get over far more 

 ground in a day, than one that is jaded 

 or stiff from overwork; and besides, the 

 good, active horse tends to make the 

 driver a better and more efficient employee. 

 Another consideration is the advertising 

 v^ilue of a good horse in good condition and 

 spirits. This increases every year, and in 

 cities where work-horse parades are held 

 it increases very fast. Customers look 

 more and more at the horse used, directly 

 or indirectly, in supplying their wants, 

 and a fine horse gives an appearance of 

 success and up-to-dateness that is worth 

 much more liian it costs. 



112 



