THE SUCKLING COLT. 13 



ankles and skin their legs. Musty food should 

 not be allowed to accumulate and troughs should 

 be cleaned out after each meal. Colts may be fed 

 once a day, or twice, according to judgment, de- 

 pending on amount of extra nourishment neces- 

 sary. Feed as much as colts will eat up clean. 

 Some horsemen use a thoroughly mixed feed in 

 proportions of two bushels of oats, one of wheat, 

 one-half of cracked corn, fifty pounds of bran and 

 twenty pounds of oil meal (not oil cake but ground 

 flaxseed meal). Colts, as well as mares, should 

 be salted once or twice a week, or leave rock salt 

 where it can be licked as desired. 



Every stock farm owner should know the per- 

 centage of limestone in his soil. Fast trotters 

 never came from lime-deficient regions. Horses 

 raised in such localities are apt to be week-boned, 

 therefore unsound. If your soil is deficient in lime 

 take a piece of fresh-burned lime the size of a 

 hen's egg and drop it into the water troughs once or 

 twice a week. Speaking of water troughs they 



should be cleaned out regularly. 



"As the twig is bent the tree inclines," so par- 

 ticular attention should be given to a colt in the 

 first few months of its life. As John Splan once 

 wrote: "Anyone who can not control his temper 

 should never be allowed to have anything to do 

 with a colt. * ^ * You should begin to impress 

 the colt from its earliest life that man is his friend, 

 and the foundation of his education is laid." 



