AND BOILED GRAIN AS FOOD FOR FARM-HORSES. 315 
and the other on boiled grain, is so strikingly near, that, were 
the one condition of food as easily and economically supplied as 
the other, it would not matter which was used. The expence, 
however, independent of the trouble of boiling the grain, amount- 
ing to about l£d. on two feeds for each horse, is such as to render 
it unadvisable to employ other than raw grain. It is a fact, no 
doubt, that considerable quantities of grain given in a raw un- 
prepared state pass undigested, which afterwards afford food to 
birds and fowls, or grow on being put into the ground, as I my- 
self have experienced ; but it is equally true that much of what is 
boiled likewise passes undigested, though perhaps not in the 
same proportion. The moist and slippery condition of boiled 
grain makes it easily swallowed without much mastication; and 
the pyloric orifice of the stomach leading into the intestines being 
always open, the grain passes through the stomach before the 
gastric juice has time to extract the nourishment from it. Be- 
sides, it is possible that the farinaceous or saccharine matter in 
the grain may, in some way, be injured during the process of 
boiling, and its nutritive properties thereby lessened. The same 
objection applies to the steaming of grain for food, as both seem 
to resemble each other in their faults and properties. Mr. Stewart, 
an excellent writer on veterinary subjects, says, “It is matter of 
indifference whether it be cooked by steam or water.” 
From these considerations, suggested as they have been by the 
similar effects which boiled and raw unbruised grain have in sup- 
porting horses, I would call attention to the mode of bruising the 
grain, in preference to either of the ways above described. The 
husk of oats is a very obdurate integument. It is almost, if not 
altogether, indigestible; and it is, moreover, not subject, in the 
form of “ sheeled seeds,” from the meal-mill, to decomposition, 
and has not, therefore, been applied to any useful purpose as 
manure. Why most innkeepers and others prefer to give to their 
horses oats having a strong thick husk, cannot be accounted for 
on any principle that can counterbalance the circumstance, that 
husks, being indigestible, are so much useless matter to animals. 
The thinner the husks and the larger the kernel, the more nou- 
rishment must the grain possess. 
Mr. Stewart, in speaking of the waste of grain from indiges- 
tion, says, — “ In some horses the quantity that passes off entire 
is very considerable: it has been estimated at one-sixth of all that 
is eaten. But the quantity is not certain, and there is seldom 
such a loss as this.” I am of opinion that the estimate is quite 
within the mark. I have already stated, that, with the excep- 
tion of one, those horses which were fed on boiled and unprepared 
raw grain lost in weight, during the two months which the ex- 
