58 MAINE STATE COLLEGE 



FEEDING EXPERIMENT WITH COLTS. 



An investigation of the relative value of different feeding stuffs 

 as food for colts, involves two main considerations : 



(1.) The amount of growth produced. 



(2.) The quality of the animal. 



A horse is said to have good quality when he has a well devel- 

 oped muscular system and exhibits that nervous activity or force 

 which we call life or spirit. Apart from inherited tendencies, the 

 development of quality depends, we may believe, partly upon the 

 kind and quantity of food and partly upon the way the animal is 

 handled, i. e., the exercise and training. 



It would be a very difficult task to carry out experiments or 

 investigations that would establish the relation between food and 

 quality. It would be necessary to use more than a few animals, 

 which should be of identical breeding, and which should be fed for 

 several years on the rations to be compared. The writer is not 

 aware that up to the present time such an experiment has been 

 attempted. There exists, however, a very wide spread opinion 

 that oats are superior to any other horse food for giving that 

 muscular and nervous condition which so largely determines the 

 market value of an animal. 



A test of the amount of growth produced with colts by various 

 foods is not especially difficult, at least not more so than with 

 bovines. Two such tests have been made by this Station, one in 

 1890, (see Station Rep't, 1890, p. 68) and one in 1891, the results 

 of which follow. In both instances oats have been compared with 

 a mixture of other grain foods, such as peas and wheat middlings 

 (1890), aud gluten meal, linseed meal and middlings (1891). 



The outcome of the experiment in 1890 was that oats produced 

 less growth than an equal weight of a mixture of peas and 

 middlings, the relation of growth being as 100 to 111. The fact 

 that in this experiment peas were used as a part of the grain 

 ration, a food that in the market is comparatively costly, seemed 

 to be a good reason for repeating the experiment with commercial 

 foods that are more common, bear a less price and are compara- 

 tively nitrogenous in character. 



