Feed and Care of the Horse — Rations. 289 



and foal will largely shift for themselves. Watchfulness should 

 always detect the first appearance of ailment. Diarrhea brought on 

 by overfeeding or exposure should be checked by giving parched 

 flour, rice-meal gruel, or boiled milk ; and constipation, the other com- 

 mon evil, may be relieved by the use of castor oil and by injections 

 of soapy warm water. In all cases of derangement the food for both 

 dam and foal should at once be lessened, since nothing aids nature 

 more at such times than reducing the work of the digestive tract, 



456. Feeding the young foal.— By placing the feed box from 

 which the dam eats her grain low, the foal, at about two months of 

 age, will begin nibbling from the mother's supply and will soon 

 acquire a taste for such food. Splan^ writes: "With the colts all 

 out to grass and doing well, it is time to separate the oldest of them 

 from the younger and commence feeding them grain, which is done 

 in this way: Build a pen in some suitable place which is the most 

 convenient, making it high enough so that the mare will not try 

 to jump it, and have the space from the ground to the bottom rail or 

 board sufficient to allow the foal to pass under. Put in a handy 

 gate or bars, then an ample feed trough. Lead your mares and foals 

 singly into this enclosure and let them eat together 2 or 3 times and 

 they will soon learn where the food is. Take out the mares, shut 

 up the gate, leave the colts in. Keep a good supply of oats there, 

 and you will find the foals there regularly running in and out getting 

 their rations. To induce the dam to loiter about this place, keep a 

 large lump of rock salt near it and occasionally a mess of oats, and 

 there is no further trouble. In this way, at weaning time, which is 

 at the age of 5 months, the colts have learned to eat, and the result is 

 that when they are taken away from their dams they do not miss 

 them so much. ' ' 



457. Raising the orphan.— Johnstone- gives the following on feed- 

 ing the orphan foal : ' * Get the milk of as fresh a cow as possible, 

 and the poorer the butter fat, the better. . . . Take a dessert-spoon- 

 ful of the best granulated white sugar and add enough warm water 

 to dissolve it. Then add 3 tablespoonfuls of lime water and enough 

 new milk to make a pint. Get an old teapot and scald it thoroly. 

 Over the spout tie securely the thumb of an old kid glove, and with 

 a darning needle pierce holes in the kid. Warm the milk to blood 

 heat, pour a part of it into the teapot, and when it flows thru the 

 spout into the thumb, an excellent imitation of the maternal teat 



' Life with the Trotters. - The Horse Book. 



20 



