PRACTICE OF FEEDING. 249 



hours per day. In the morning, about five o'clock, they are 

 fed with grain ; they go to work till eight, when they are fed 

 again, sometimes on boiled roots, to which, corn-dust, light 

 oats, or meal-seeds may be added, and sometimes on raw 

 grain ; they work from nine till twelve or one — are fed a third 

 time ; return to work till six or seven — are fed a fourth time, 

 generally on boiled food, unless there be grass. Some give 

 a small quantity of grain about nine or ten o'clock, which 

 forms a fifth feed, but this is not common. 



The farmers hereabout reserve the light husky oats for 

 home consumption. It is very well to do so, for they answer 

 as well as any others, if given in sufficient quantity. But I 

 often see much of this grain wasted. It is boiled with roots, 

 or it is scattered raw upon the boiled food and given along 

 with it. It does not soon burst in boiling, and the horse 

 swallows it whole. Such oats should either be bruised by 

 the rollers, or given raw, with a little chaff. 



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

 16 to 24 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 hommony 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, especially in keeping up 

 a healthy system and the bowels open, and in giving the hair 

 a fine glossy appearance. Potatoes and other roots, unless 

 choked, 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 nutricious grasses.] 



The cost of keeping farm-horses has been variously estima- 

 ted at from 15 to 40 pounds per year. There is, without 

 doubt, a good deal of difference in different places, dependent 

 upon the size and work of the horse, and also upon the 

 varying price of his food. Some feed at much less cost than 



