340 
MANUAL OF MODERN FARRIER 
hay ; but a waggon or dray-horse will require about forty 
pounds weight daily, in proportions as above. The horse 
having consumed the above quantity of food, requires none 
during the night, and it would be proper to keep his rack 
without hay. 
Some horses which are greedy feeders swallow their pease 
and oats without being properly chewed, and much of both 
pass through the stomach and intestines without undergoing 
any change ; indeed this is the case to a certain extent 
with all horses; the consequence is, that the animal is 
deprived of their nutritive qualities. Horses which do not 
chew their food, can easily be detected by examining their 
dung, when it will be found to contain much grain in its 
perfect condition. When this is the case, the grain and 
pulse should be bruised, and also mixed with a portion of 
chaff, or cut hay and straw, which he cannot swallow 
without chewing. Besides deriving all the benefit of the 
nutritive qualities of the food, the animal is prevented from 
bolting his food too quickly and overloading his stomach, 
and rendering him unfit for being used immediately after 
feeding, as we have already explained when treating of the 
stomach, page 273. Slow feeding is of much importance, 
because in the lengthened process a greater portion of saliva 
is carried into the stomach with the food, which materially 
assists in the process of digestion. 
Machines have been constructed for cutting hay into 
chaff. Meadow hay, clover, wheat, barley, and oat straw 
are cut into pieces of a little more than half an inch in 
length, and the whole well incorporated, and the propor¬ 
tional quantity of bruised oats and beans added, and mea¬ 
sured out at meal-times to the animal. If the chaff is 
slightly wetted immediately before feeding, the horse is 
enabled easier to chew it. With some horses the bruised 
