THE HOESE. 31 



VI. FEEDING. 



1. The Best Food for Horses. Considerable care and system 

 are necessary in feeding horses, so as to keep them in the best 

 health and the highest working order. 



" The best food for ordinary working-horses in America," 

 A. B. Allen says, "is as much good hay or grass as they will 

 eat, corn-stalks or blades, or for the want of these, straw, and 

 a mixture of from sixteen to twenty-four quarts per day, of 

 about half and half of oats and the better quality of wheat bran. 

 When the horse is seven years old past, two to four quarts of 

 corn or hominy or meal ground from the corn and cob is 

 preferable to the pure grain. Two to four quarts of wheat, 

 barley, rye, buckwheat, peas, or beans, either whole or ground, 

 may be substituted for the corn. A pint of oil meal or a gill of 

 flax-seed mixed with the other food is very good for a relish, es- 

 pecially in keeping up a healthy system and the bowels open, and 

 in giving the hair a fine glossy appearance. Potatoes and 

 other roots, unless cooked, do not seem to be of much benefit 

 in this climate, especially in winter they lie cold upon the 

 stomach and subject the horse to scouring ; besides, they are 

 too watery for a hard-working animal. Corn is fed too much 

 at the South and West. It makes horses fat, but can not give 

 them that hard, muscular flesh which oats do; hence their 

 softness and want of endurance in general work and on the 

 road, in comparison with Northern and Eastern horses, reared 

 and fed on oats and more nutritious grasses." 



2. Work and Digestion. Slow work aids digestion, empties 

 the bowels, and sharpens the appetite. Hence it happens that 

 on Sunday night and Monday morning there are more cases of 

 colic and founder than during any other part of the week. - 

 Horses that never want an appetite ought not to have an un- 

 limited allowance of hay on Sunday; they have time to 

 eat a great deal more than they need, and the torpid state of 

 the stomach and bowels, produced by a day of idleness, renders 

 an additional quantity very dangerous. Farm and cart horses 

 are fed immediately before commencing their labor, and the 



