472 FOOD. 



him, or perhaps only a little hay. One of the most successful methods of 

 enabling a horse to get well through a long journey is to give him only a little 

 at a time while on the road, and at night to indulge him with a double feed of 

 corn and a full allowance of beans. 



Water. — This is a part of stable management little regarded by the farmer. 

 He lets his horses loose morning and night, and they go to the nearest pond or 

 brook and drink their fill, and no harm results, for they obtain that kind of 

 water which nature designed them to have, in a manner prepared for them by 

 some unknown influence of the atmosphere, as well as by the deposition of 

 many saline admixtures. The difference between hard and soft water is known 

 to every one. In hard water soap will curdle, vegetables will not boil soft, and 

 the saccharine matter of the malt cannot be fully obtained in the process of 

 brewing. There is nothing in which the different effect of hard and soft water 

 is so evident as in the stomach and digestive organs of the horse. Hard water, 

 drawn fresh from the well, will assuredly make the coat of a horse unaccus- 

 tomed to it stare, and it will not unfrequently gripe and otherwise injure him. 

 Instinct or experience has made even the horse himself conscious of this, for he 

 will never drink hard water if he has access to soft, and he will leave the most 

 transparent and pure water of the well for a river, although the stream may be 

 turbid, and even for the muddiest pool *. He is injured, however, not so much 

 by the hardness of the well-water as by its coldness — particularly by its cold- 

 ness in summer, and when it is many degrees below the temperature of the 

 atmosphere. The water in the brook and the pond being warmed by long 

 exposure to the air, as well as having become soft, the horse drinks freely of it 

 without danger. 



If the horse were watered three times a day, and especially in summer, he 

 would often be saved from the sad torture of thirst, and from many a disease. 

 Whoever has observed the eagerness with which the over- worked horse, hot 

 and tired, plunges his muzzle into the pail, and the difficulty of stopping him 

 until he has drained the last drop, may form some idea of what he had previ- 

 ously suffered, and will not wonder at the violent spasms, and inflammation, and 

 sudden death, that often result. 



There is a prejudice in the minds of many persons against the horse being 

 fairly supplied with water. They think that it injures his wind, and disables 

 him for quick and hard work. If he is galloped, as he too often is, immediately 

 after drinking, his wind may be irreparably injured ; but if he were oftcner 

 suffered to satiate his thirst at the intervals of rest, he would be happier and 

 better. It is a fact unsuspected by those who have not carefully observed the 

 horse, that if he has frequent access to water he will not drink so much in the 

 course of the day, as another will do, who, to cool his parched mouth, swallows 

 as fast as he can, and knows not when to stop. 



On a journey, a horse should be liberally supplied with water. When he is 

 a little cooled, two or three quarts may be given to him, and after that, his feed. 

 Before he has finished his corn two or three quarts more may be offered. He will 

 take no harm if this is repeated three or four times during a long and hot day. 



It is a judicious rule with travellers, that when a horse begins to refuse his 

 food, he should be pushed no farther that day. It may, however, be worth 

 while to try whether this does not proceed from thirst, as much as from ex- 

 haustion, for in many instances his appetite and his spirits will return soon after 

 he has partaken of the refreshing draught. 



* Some trainers have so much fear of hard has been accustomed to drink, and that which 

 or strange water, that they carry with them to they know agrees with it. 

 the different courses the water that the animal 



