98 STABLE MANUAL AND HOESE DOCTOR 



Business of various kinds will sometimes compel j^ou to 

 alter your hours of feeding, but regularity should always 

 be adhered to as strictly as possible ; for, after having been 

 for some time accustomed to be fed at a certain time, 

 nature will crave food at the usual hour, even though 

 the previous meal may have been more than commonly 

 abundant. A horse that is generally taken out in the 

 forenoon, if fed twice in the morning, should have the 

 larger portion of his food at his first meal ; and if he be 

 required to work on most days from about nine till one or 

 two, the better plan is to divide his corn into three feeds 

 instead of four. This is preferable to working him on a 

 full stomach, than v/hich few things in time are likely to 

 prove more injurious. 



EXERCISE. 



Exercise, the prime necessity of anim.al health, is an 

 instinct wonderfully active in the horse, when free to 

 indulge his own will, and at leisure from the restraint and 

 servitude of man. The benefits of exercise, as a preventive 

 of disease and as a promoter of the working condition of 

 the animal frame, are equally self-evident. If it be true, 

 then, that in a state of nature horses instinctively play with 

 each other, and that to such an extent as to produce per- 

 spiration and violent breathing, may we not infer that 

 when we stable them, subject to restraint, and then neglect 

 to exercise them, their health must be injured ? In all 

 great cities the evil of want of exercise sadly prevails 

 among the better class of horses. 



Exercise greatly improves the wind, by promoting an 

 absorption of the surrounding fat from the viscera of the 

 chest, and thus allowing the lungs to expand uninter- 

 ruptedly ; it also enlarges the air cells of the lungs 

 themselves ; and hence, by the imbibing of more air, 

 the animal can remain longer between his inspirations. 

 The pearl - diver by practice, it is said, can remain 

 under water between two and three minutes, while 

 insensibility follows our own immersion after fifty seconds. 

 And thus the colt in training is first able to take a 

 gentle gallop, next a brushing one^ and lastly he stretches 

 over the ground at the top of his speed without 

 distress. 



