FOOD 157 



quantities of coarse, dry, indigestible food, with a diet 

 containing insufficient roots, causes impaction of the third 

 stomach. 



The age of food exercises considerable influence; new 

 hay and new oats are very properly objected to, as 

 they have not undergone the process of maturing which 

 being kept a certain number of months imparts, and which 

 experience shows adds to their digestibility. 



Wheat as a food for horses has a bad name, perhaps it 

 is not altogether deserved. Horses are fond of it, and the 

 digestive trouble which has been known to follow its use 

 may have been due to the excessive quantity eaten, for it 

 may be laid down as a golden rule that no grain to which 

 an animal is not accustomed should at first be given in 

 anything but small quantities. 



Laminitis following the use of wheat might equally well 

 have followed any other digestive trouble due to the intro- 

 duction of a new food in excessive quantity, considering 

 the sympathy existing between the alimentary canal and 

 the feet. 



Both barley and maize are valuable horse foods, and 

 at one time each was blamed as producing laminitis and 

 intestinal trouble ; but the remarks made regarding wheat 

 apply quite as strongly to barley and maize, which we 

 know to be really valuable articles of diet. 



Green food will produce diarrhoea or more serious diges- 

 tive trouble, such as acute tympanites, with animals not 

 used to it ; but, again, it is largely a question of quantity, 

 and in a short time with care the stomach and bowels 

 become perfectly tolerant. Eank herbage of any kind, 

 young grass and clover, grass consumed before the dew is 

 off it, or stale ' grains,' are all causes of tympanites in 

 cattle. 



In all the above cases, the food has disagreed owing to 

 mismanagement, and one has no difficulty in grasping the 

 fact. But it is not an easy matter to understand how a food 

 suddenly causes trouble to which a horse, for instance, has 

 for years been used, where the quantity received day after 



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