PRINCIPLES OF FEEDING. 243 



mucli, not because there is little to give, but because it is 

 thought unnecessary or wasteful to give more. 



Both young and old horses suffer more mischief from want 

 of suITicient food than is generally supposed. The young, 

 however, sufler most. Starvation checks the growth and 

 destroys the shape. Horses that have been ill-fed when young, 

 are almost invariably small, long-legged, light-carcassed, and 

 narrow-chested. Some of them have a good deal of energy, 

 but all are soon exhausted, unfit for protracted exertion. 

 Grown-up horses, when much reduced by deficient nourish- 

 ment, require more food to put them into working order than 

 would have kept them for two or three months in the condi- 

 tion they require to possess when going into work. If the 

 horses are to be idle for twelve months, it may perhaps be 

 cheaper to let them get very lean than to keep them plump ; 

 but for a period of three or four months, during which farm 

 and some other horses are idle or nearly so, it is cheaper to 

 keep as much flesh upon them as they will need at the com- 

 mencement of their labor. 



When the horse is starved, besides losing strength and 

 flesh, his bowels get full of worms, and his skin covered with 

 lice. Very often he takes mange, and sometimes he does not 

 moult, or the hair falls suddenly and entirely off, leaving the 

 skin nearly bald for a long time. The skin of an ill-fed horse 

 is always rigid, sticking to the ribs, and the hair dull, staring, 

 soft, dead-like. I have never seen anything like permanent 

 evil arising from temporary starvation of mature horses. If 

 not famished to death, they recover strength and animation 

 upon good and sutficient feeding. But starvation always spoils 

 the shape of a growinfr horse. 



Excess of Food. — When the supply of food is greater than 

 the work demands, the horse becomes fat. The superfluous 

 nutriment is not all wasted. The system does not require it 

 at the time, but it may at some other. To provide against an 

 increased demand or a deficient supply, this redundant nutri- 

 ment is stored away. It is converted into fat and deposited 

 into various parts of the body ; some is laid under the skin, 

 some among the muscles, but the largest quantity is found 

 among the intestines and inside the belly. When wanted, 

 this fat is reconverted into blood. 



Slow-working horses may be fat and yet not unfit for work ; 

 but the weight of the fat is a serious encumbrance to fast- 

 workers, and its situation impedes the action of important 

 organs, particularly the lungs. Horses at full and fast work 



