FEEDING AND WATERING. 39 



largely used as an article of horse food, either unground or in the 

 form of meal. Com is a highly concentrated food, heating and defi- 

 cient in muscle-forming elements. When fed to horses, it should 

 therefore be combined with nitrogenous foods in such proportions 

 as are best adapted to the season, amount of work required, and 

 other conditions. It is quite a usual practice with many horse 

 owners to feed their horses com in the ear, under the idea of saving 

 the expense of grinding. But this is very questionable economy, 

 for a considerable part of the grain must go through undigested. 

 On the other hand if fed in the form of fine meal, it should be mixed 

 with several times its own bulk of cut hay or other coarse feed to 

 separate the particles and expose them to the action of the digestive 

 fluids of the stomach. If fed alone, com meal becomes impaxsted 

 in the stomach, forming a plastic adhesive mass nearly impenetra- 

 ble to the gastric juice. Severe and in some cases fatal coUc is the 

 frequent result. Even if the meal is mixed with groimd oats, the 

 mass is too dense to form a safe and desirable food, unless fed in 

 combination with coarser material. Prof. Stewart in his work on 

 " Feeding Animals," says : " We have known of the death of at least 

 a dozen horses, which on examination proved to be caused by feed- 

 ing com meal alone. Some feed wet and others dry, because the 

 wet meal may be swallowed with very little mastication, while the 

 dry meal must be masticated untU the saliva saturates it, before it 

 can be swallowed ; and the saliva assists digestion. It is, therefore, 

 in better condition for digestion when fed dry than wet. Four of 

 those who had lost horses by feeding meal alone, when they changed 

 the system and fed the meal upon cut hay, first moistened so that 

 the meal adhered to it, and both must be eaten together, had no 

 further losses or even illness of their horses. In our experience of 

 about thirty years in feeding work horses, no ill effects have arisen 

 feom feeding com meal, ground as fine as burr millstones can 

 properly do it, when mixed with cut hay or straw. We have fed 

 horses, from four years old to twenty, upon various concentrated 

 grains, ground into fine meal, and they were always in good health, 

 when the rule of mixing fine meal with cut hay was strictly ad- 

 hered to." 



BAEiiEY is the principal grain food of horses in many parts of 

 the world. The Arabs feed their famous horses largely on barley ; 

 the French in Algeria have adopted the same practice. In some of 

 the great breeding stables of Illinois barley and oats ground together 

 in proportions varying with the season, are fed to the stallions and 

 niares. The iatroduction of a black hulless barley into cultivation 



