64 farmers' and mechanics' journal. 



horse of" any colt that nature has not deformed, and whoever is 

 aware of the eifects of diii'erent methods of rearing;; children, will 

 not be disinclined to agree with him. 'I'he grand enemies of young 

 animals, are moisture and bad food ; and the younger, the more 

 scruj)ulously should they be preserved from both. A horse should 

 be fed better, and ke[)t v\arm and dry more the first year of his life, 

 than any other ; and it has an advantage he will never lose. Many 

 of our farmers have an idea that thoiigh insufficient nourishment 

 will check the growth, the horse will still be a good one, though of 

 small size ; in England they assert, that his height will be the same, 

 bat that he will be weak and leggy. I have the opinion of one of 

 the oldest Merino sheep breeders, that it is indispensable that the 

 lambs should be kept warm and thriving, or they will not pay. A 

 long coat is both the cause and eil'cct of not thriving. \( any one 

 will examine loiig-coated and short-coated horses exposed to the 

 same rain, he will find one saturated with water under the belly 

 chest and throat ; and not dry for some hours after it is done : that 

 the water runs in streaks from the back of the other ; that his bel- 

 ly, chest and throat are dry ; and that he dries all over as soon as 

 the rain is done. Ihe dillcrent elFect upon the insensible perspi- 

 ration and the lungs are evident enough ; and, if a colt wears a 

 long coat, he should not be exposed to continued wet weather. 



The thorough-bred horse is always allowed, in England, a full 

 allowance of corn at all periods of his life, if well. All danger of 

 his being injiired by over-feeding is pievented by the attentive and 

 experienced hands in which he is placed. He is carefully groomed 

 at the earliest age ; the advantage of this and clothing, no one is 

 ever convinced of by anj thing but experience, though he knows 

 the benefit he himself derives from flannel and flesh brushes. No- 

 thing of this, however, is necessary here, excepting that the horse 

 should have a little corn, (oats in preference to any other kind of 

 corn,) the first year. He must not, however, more than at any 

 other age, be fed high on any kind of cold, or he is in danger of 

 some local inflanmiation. He may have that of the lungs and die ; 

 or get well with his wind touched or his feet spoiled for life. The 

 thickness of wind arising from thickening of the wind-pipe, is attri- 

 buted in England, to improper treatment of the distemper. Man 

 has various temperaments : the horse none but the sanguineous. 

 All his diseases, that do not arise from contagion, assume an in- 

 flammatory form. If he has been allowed to suffer from severe 

 colds, when young, he will be preternaturally liable to them 

 through life. This can be explained on anatomical principles : it 

 is an analogous fact, that the native of a warm climate has his 

 health less affected by the first northern winter he is exposed to, 

 than by any other ; and that in Napoleon's Russian Campaign, the 

 Italians and Spaniards suffered less than the Germans and the 

 Poles. 



The colt requires nothing hut grass and hay after the first year. 

 He should be perfectly broken in the winter before he is three 

 years old ; but must not be taken upon a frozen road. He is less 



