144 THE FAMILY HORSE. 



follow Bermuda grass and Johnson grass, while a few grasses 

 natural to the country and elsewhere are more or less esteemed. 

 Northern cultivated grasses and the millets are also successfully 

 grown there in different sections. 



At both the North and South, oats, wheat, rye and barley are 

 useful for pasture before getting too rank ; and cut when the grain 

 is in the milk, just before it begins to harden, and properly cured, 

 these make excellent hay, more especially the oats. Corn-stalks are 

 best grown of the sweet dwarf sorts, in rows two to three feet 

 apart, and the stalks standing about three inches apart in the rows. 

 They are sweeter then and far more nutritious than grown up thickly 

 from the seed sown broadcast. Cut when 'n the silk or a nubbin 

 begins to form, and properly cured, my horses greedily eat the 

 whole from butt to tassel, and often prefer them to choicest hay 

 when both lay side by side. 



GRAIN AND MEAL. 



Oats and barley are preferred as horse feed in the order 

 named, and are best ground. Com alone is too fattening, and 

 occasionally gives colic. It should be ground and fed about half 

 and half mixed with wheat bran. Some think unbolted wheat and 

 rye flour are superior to this mixture, and if found too rich or 

 heavy, a little pure bran may be added to them to increase that 

 already left in the groimd grain. To each of the above half a pint to 

 a pint of linseed or oil meal may be added night and morning. This 

 promotes digestion, slightly lubricates the Intestines, and causes a 

 better relishing of the other food. At the South, cotton-seed meal 

 takes the place of this, but it occasionally affects Northern animals 

 unfavorably, and must therefore be fed cautiously. Hay passed 

 short through the fodder cutter to the amount of a peck or half a 

 bushel, with the meal ration mixed in it, and then wet up, is often 

 fed twice to thrice a day in addition to long hay; but this occasion- 

 ally causes severe colic to the horse. When ascertained, change this 

 ration to hay and meal dry, each by itself. A few quarts of roots 

 per day, when no other green food is given, are highly beneficial, as 

 they soften and promote the digestion of the dry food. Carrots are 

 the best, sugar beets and mangels next. Parsnips, I know not how 

 truly, are said to affect the eyes ; yet I do not see how this should 

 be. Potatoes and turnips, unless cooked, are apt to bring on scours. 



SALT, ASHES, AND SULPHUE. 



Keep constantly a good-sized lump of rock-salt in the feed-box 

 ior the horse to nibble at pleasure. It will then take just as much 



