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MIXED BOILED FOOD, CHAFF, ETC. 



Mixed boiled food is often absolutely necessary to 

 recover lost flesh ; and, when given only once a day, 

 the evening is the proper time. One map of coltee, 

 one of oorud, one of barley, one of bran, half a one of 

 linseed-meal, with three drachms of salt, or six oun- 

 ces of ghoor, according to the horse's taste, all put 

 into hot water, and boiled for twenty minutes, with 

 one map of dry ground gram, and one of sliced car- 

 rots or turnips afterwards added, make an excellent 

 evening's feed, and one which is very refreshing after 

 a long day's hunt.* This kind of supper, however, 

 is often refused, unless the horse has been a little 

 habituated to it, or if the cooking-pot it was boiled in 

 was the least greasy or dirty, or perhaps from dislike 

 to one of the articles. Any change of diet, any thing 

 new, must always be introduced by little and little, 

 or the sensitive and dainty appetite of a horse will be 

 sure to take disgust. Potatoes, or yams, should only 



* Coltee, oorud, moong, and methee are the grains for boiling, and some- 

 times barley also. Coltee requires more boiling than either of the other three, 

 but none of these should ever be given raw. Bajree and mhut are not so good 

 for boiling ; they are better in their natural state, and ground gram also, unless 

 particularly hard, or the horse sick. Bajree and mhut are always mixed, as 

 bajree alone is too heating ; and mhut alone gives the gripes, especially when 

 it is mixed with rats' dung. 



Wheat is tho most nutritious of all grain, but at the same time the most lia- 

 ble to disagree. The strongest-stomached horse could not bear a change to 

 an entire wheat diet under four or five months, and then it is very unwhole- 

 some. Barley is the next most nutritious grain, then oats, then peas, and 

 lastly, beans. It appears singular that beans, which in England are deemed 

 absolutely requisite to a horse at hard work (not to train on), and which are 

 known to put on the hardest flesh, should contain less nutriment than the other 

 grain ; and it appears equally singular that lucern, the value of which we all 

 know in India in fattening a horse, should be the least nutritious of all the 

 grasses ; but so it is. 



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