94 STABLE MANUAL AND HORSE DOCTOR 



a greater proportion of gluten than any other kind of grain ; 

 with the horse it is difficult of digestion, and apt to form 

 obstructions in the bowels. This will often be the case if 

 the horse is suffered to drink much soon after feeding. 

 Wheaten flour, boiled in water to the thickness of starch, is 

 given with good effect in over-purging, especially if com- 

 bined with chalk and opium. There is no grain, however, 

 that seems to agree so well with the constitution of the 

 horse as the oat. 



Beans add materially to the vigour of the horse. There 

 are many horses that will not stand hard work without 

 beans being mingled with their food, and these not horses 

 whose tendency to purge it may be necessary to restrain by 

 the astringency of the bean. There is no horseman who is 

 not aware of the difference in the spirit of his horse if he 

 allows or denies him beans on his journey. They afford not 

 merely a temporary stimulus, but may be daily used without 

 losing their influence or producing exhaustion. Beans are 

 generally given whole. This is absurd ; for the young horse, 

 whose teeth are strong, seldom requires them ; while the 

 old horse, to whom they are in a manner necessary, is 

 scarcely able to masticate them, swallows many of them 

 whole, and drops much corn from his mouth in the 

 ineffectual attempt to break them. Beans should not be 

 merely split, but crushed; they will even then give 

 sufficient employment to the grinders of the animal. 



Tares. — Of the value of tares, as forming a portion of 

 the late spring and summer food of the stabled, and 

 especially the slow-worked a^gricultural horse, there can 

 be no doubt. They are nutritive, and they act as a mild 

 medicine. When surfeit lumps appear on the skin, and 

 the slow-worked horse begins to rub himself against the 

 divisions of the stall, and the legs are turgid, a few tares 

 cut up with the chaff, or given instead of a portion of the 

 hay, will often aflbrd relief. Ten or twelve pounds may be 

 given daily, and half that w^eight of hay subtracted. It is 

 an erroneous notion that, given in moderate quantities, 

 they either roughen the coat or lessen the capability for 

 work. 



Lucern is by some agriculturists considered preferable to 

 tares, and sainfoin superior to lucern. Although they 

 contain but a small quantity of nutritive matter they are 

 easily digested and perfectly assimilated ; they speedily put 



