Tur Horsz. 81 
VI—FEEDING. 
1. The Best Food for Horses.—Considerable care and system 
are necessary in feeding horses, so as to keep them in the best 
health and the highest working order. 
“The best food for ordinary working-horses in America,” 
A. B. Allen says, “‘is as much good hay or grass as they will 
eat, corn-stalks or blades, or for the want of these, straw, and 
a mixture of from sixteen to twenty-four quarts per day, of 
about half and half of oats and the better quality of wheat bran. 
When the horse is seven years old past, two to four quarts of 
corn or hominy or meal ground from the corn and cob is 
preferable to the pure grain. Two to four quarts of wheat, 
barley, rye, buckwheat, peas, or beans, either whole or ground, 
may be substituted for the corn. A pint of oil meal or a gill of 
flax-seed mixed with the other food is very good for a relish, es- 
pecially in keeping up a healthy system andthe bowels open, and 
in giving the hair a fine glossy appearance. Potatoes and 
other roots, unless cooked, do not seem to be of much benefit 
in this climate, especially in winter—they lie cold upon the 
stomach and subject the horse to scouring; besides, they are 
too watery for a hard-working animal. Corn is fed too much 
at the South and West. It makes horses fat, but can not give 
them that hard, muscular flesh which oats do; hence their 
softness and want of endurance in general work and on the 
road, in comparison with Northern and Eastern horses, reared 
and fed on oats and more nutritious grasses.” 
2. Work and DigestionSlow work aids digestion, empties 
the bowels, and sharpens the appetite. Hence it happens that 
on Sunday night and Monday morning there are more cases of 
colic and founder than during any other part of the week. 
Horses that never want-an appetite ought not to have an un- 
limited allowance of hay on Sunday; they have time to 
eat a great deal more than they need, and the torpid state of 
the stomach and bowels, produced by a day of idleness, renders 
an additional quantity very dangerous. Farm and cart horses 
are fed immediately before commencing their labor, and the 
