250 STABLE ECONOMY. 



others, by employing cheap substitutes during the high price 

 of any article of ordinary consumption. When oats are dear, 

 wheat, barley, beans, or roots, may partly or wholly supply 

 their place, and hay may be entirely withheld if good straw 

 can be procured. It has been boasted that farm-horses may 

 be kept at summer work on cut green food, with almost no 

 grain. What the owner might call work is not known. But 

 in this country grass alone will not produce workable horses. 

 If food is not given, work can not be taken. Every man 

 who has a horse has it in his power to starve the animal ; 

 but that, I should think, can afford little matter for exulta- 

 tion. 



Cart-Horses. — The cart-horses employed about towns 

 are fed on oats, beans, bran, and hay. Meal seeds, barley, 

 and corn-dusts, hay-seeds, and roots, are also in common use. 

 In winter, one feed is generally boiled and given the last at 

 night. If any be left, it is given the first in the morning. It 

 usually consists of beans and turnips, or barley and beans, to 

 which bran and hay, seed or barn chaff, are added. Straw is 

 almost never used as fodder for these horses. Hay is given 

 in unmeasured quantity, and it is seldom cut into chaff. In 

 summer, cut grass is used instead of hay, without any altera- 

 tion in the quantity of grain ; but boiled food is abandoned as 

 the grass comes in. Some give boiled food every Sunday, 

 once a day in summer, and twice in winter. It is supposed 

 to be less constipating than raw grain for the day of rest. 

 Raw beans, with dry bran, form the manger food of a great 

 many cart-horses during the winter. The last feed is boiled 

 with turnips and hay seed, and the rack is filled with hay. 

 Meal seeds are often given along with oats or beans, and some- 

 times alone. 



The quantity of fodder is seldom limited. The horse eats 

 as much as he pleases, or as much as his owner can afford. 

 It will probably vary from 15 to 30 pounds in the twenty-four 

 hours. The quantity of grain varies from 12 to 16 pounds. 

 The oats and beans are seldom bruised. 



When the work is regular, the horses are usually fed three 

 times in the stable, and not at all in the yoke. When irreg- 

 ular, and having many stoppages, the carter generally takes 

 out a small bundle of hay and a little grain along with the 

 horse. The grain is given in a nose-bag, a little at a time 

 and often, when the horse stands. The hay is carried in a 

 sack, and the carter often gives a little from his hand as th8 



