CAEE AND MANAGEMENT OF ANIMALS 753 



The prevention of kicking implies a profound knowledge 

 of stable management. Horses may kick at one time and 

 not at another, at a strange companion, during sexual 

 excitement, from fright, from being interfered with during 

 feeding, and many other causes. The cause has to be 

 known before effectual preventive measures can be applied ; 

 the prevention is far more important in stables with bales 

 than in those with stall partitions. 



Horses that fail to agree must be kept apart, horses that 

 know and like each other must be kept together. This 

 sounds a mere platitude, and yet is so insufficiently ob- 

 served that special attention is here drawn to it. 



Well-known kickers must be placed by themselves, and 

 every contrivance adopted to control the habit. Some will 

 kick a partition down though no other horse is near to 

 excite them. Such are accomplished kickers and should 

 wear a kicking block or other contrivances to be presently 

 mentioned. 



A kicking log is a piece of wood at the end of a few links 

 of chain, and worn by means of a padded strap above the 

 hock. It may also be worn around the pastern, in which 

 case the wooden log lies on the ground when the leg is at 

 rest, and there is no strain on the strap. Sometimes no 

 log is employed, nothing but a few links of chain attached 

 to a strap. 



The theory of this log is that when the horse kicks it hits 

 him on the leg, but we doubt whether this is the real 

 explanation, and consider that in many cases the influence 

 is a moral one ; something is hung on the leg which the 

 horse knows has no right to be there, and its mere presence 

 prevents him from using the limb to kick with. 



In many cases the kicking log or chain is no use, and 

 something heavier has to be employed ; in such cases^ 

 very rare ones — we have gone on increasing the weight 

 attached to the pastern until the foot has become too heavy 

 for the horse to lift with ease. For this purpose we have 

 attached a drag shoe or any other weighty piece of iron to 

 a strap around the pastern, arranging it that no weight is 



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