9 4r 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
[March, 
is of little avail in securing its safety. The Blue 
Arctic Fox is smaller than our common Red Fox, it 
rarely surpassing eight pounds in weight, and being 
no more than three feet in total length. It possesses 
a very bright and intelligent eye, of a hazel color, 
and its features generally are devoid of that sly 
cunning which characterizes the fox with which we 
are all so well acquainted, and from which we take 
such pains to guard our poultry houses. 
Among the Farmers.—No. 28. 
BT ONE OP THEM. 
-- 
Horse Experience. 
The friend who sent to my pasture the Arabian 
mare which lie picked up at an auction sale in New 
York for a song, bought a mare with foal at foot last 
spring. Pretty soon he found that the mare was 
probably hopelessly lame, and the foal looked like a 
cripple, though lively enough, and not lame. One 
hind fetlock joint was much bent, so that it traveled 
on the outside of the hoof only. It was a severe tax 
upon the mare to make the journey of 18 miles to my 
farm, even after a rest of a week at a good stable. 
When there, the wisacres were all at a loss to know 
what and where the difficulty was. Some said it 
was a dislocation of the shoulder from a fall; 
others, an inflammation of the shoulder joint; 
others, that it was in the foot. The fact was, she 
bore no weight upon the off fore-foot, hardly allow¬ 
ing it to rest its own weight upon the ground. Of 
course the shoulder was all drawn up, and looked 
swollen. The hoof did not feel hot—at least, not 
very hot. She was a big coarse creature, awkward, 
and ungainly, but feeding well and giving a plenty 
of milk. The foal was large and thrifty, and its 
crooked leg was rapidly getting straighter. It was 
some time before we found out that the ailment 
from which the mare suffered was 
Navicular Disease. 
This it clearly was, for when, after a while, she 
began to bear any weight upon the foot, she 
“pointed,”—that is, she touched her toe only to 
the ground. She gradually improved, so that she 
walked, hut stumbled greatly, and limped badly 
when forced to trot. Her shoes were pulled off, 
and she was left to wander in wood pastures, and 
pretty much where she liked, for she was not worth 
stealing. She was bred to a good large horse—hand¬ 
some and stylish, with fine action, great spirit, and a 
natural fast trotter. He is just her opposite in every 
respect, except having a good road gait, and good 
size. After two months’ rest we were rather sur¬ 
prised to find that her lameness had nearly gone. It 
now recurs occasionally and slightly. She is a very 
serviceable animal, and will take a family “ Rock- 
away,” with four people in it, up hill and down for 
hours, at a gait of ten miles an hour, with little show 
of fatigue, “going for’’every hill as if it were a 
pleasure to trot up it. The diseased foot is smaller 
than the other; that is always the case with na- 
vicularis. It is now growing wider at the heel, how¬ 
ever, and the evidence of former fever, in the con¬ 
stricted band which shows as a deep depression all 
around the hoof, is at once evidence that the 
diagnosis was correct, and that health is measur¬ 
ably restored. After it became evident that she 
would be able to do farm work, I proposed to my 
friend to keep and use her a year for her next foal. 
To this he consented, and it has opened my eyes to 
Tlie Pleasure of Driving a Big Horse. 
“ Mollie McGuire,” as we call her, is 1GI hands 
high, I suppose ; perfectly willing to pull, and so 
powerful that no ordinary load taxes her strength. 
She is a fair roadster, too ; perfectly docile and easy 
to drive, but inclined to stumble. Once she turned 
a summerset in the shafts. She “ brought up ” on 
her back, with all her feet and her head under the 
forward axle, unable to breathe, and yet refraining 
from struggling, as if falling down in the shafts had 
been the daily experience of her life. I suppose it 
took about one minute, but it seemed an hour, be¬ 
fore we could run the wagon back, unbuckle reins 
and the throat-latch, and give the poor thing a 
chance to draw her breath, and get up. This is a 
digression. Heretofore I have always driven rather 
small horses—say those weighing 900 to 1,050 lbs. 
“ Mollie ” weighs 1,200 to 1,300, and is all bone 
and muscle. I would not have believed it possible 
that so great a difference in the ease of motion 
would be perceptible to one in the wagon, when 
drawn at just the same speed. “Mollie” swings 
along as easily as if she had force in reserve for ten 
times the labor; while our 900 lbs. Kanuck, who 
is as willing as possible, and will haul a ton of coal 
up from the station alone, if the roads are good, is 
just a little, but constantly, irregular in his gait ac¬ 
cording to the road, whether it is sandy or deep 
with mud, level or slightly undulating. It is a 
great satisfaction to feel as if your horse’s strength 
and willingness could hardly be overtasked, and I 
am satisfied that for country use one good big horse 
is more useful than a pair of small ones ; and on 
the road is quite as pleasant to drive. 
Rest as a Cure-all for Horses. 
Two years ago I had a mare go lame with a spavin. 
She was worked a good deal until about a year ago, 
since which time she has had profound rest, and 
meanwhile has given me an Orloff foal. She had 
been blistered and treated more or less, but grew 
worse. Now she does not go lame at all. “ Mol- 
lie’s ” navicularis was certainly cured by rest, and I 
have repeatedly known old cripples turned into the 
woods to die, pick up and come out, if not sound, 
yet valuable for years afterwards. Nature is the 
best physician, almost every time, for the common 
ills of our domestic animals, and so far as horses 
are concerned, particularly as affecting ills of their 
locomotive system, we cooperate best with Nature 
when we give them rest. There are, however, cases 
when medicine, the knife, and the burning-iron are 
necessary, and must be speedily resorted to, or it 
will be too late. If we call a veterinarian, it is more 
likely than not that he will feel constrained to do 
something or give something in order to satisfy us, 
when, if he could do exactly what he thought was 
best, without reference to what he thinks our 
wishes may be,he would try the “let alone practice.” 
Weaning a Foal. 
The books indicate that it is an easy matter to 
wean a foal, and very little is said about it. One 
of my mares had an abundance of milk, the other 
was not properly treated before foaling, and to that 
I attribute the fact that she gave a small quantity. 
She foaled after having been only a week or ten 
days at pasture, and both she and the colt suffered, 
as I suppose, from the relaxing effect of the change 
of diet, which occurred just when she most needed 
her strength and vigor. When the foal of the other 
mare was seven months old, we weaned it, and 
learned two or three interesting facts. One is, that 
it would not have been difficult to take one foal 
away and give the mare another, for she allowed 
the one not her own to suck repeatedly, her own be¬ 
ing absent. I have frequently regretted not having 
put the little colt with the big mare at that time 
for a permanency. This mare gave what struck 
me as an enormous quantity of milk. The foal was 
removed at about 9 o’clock; by noon, her udder 
seeming much distended, it was milked out, and 
nearly two quarts of milk were obtained. It was 
not measured, so we may fairly say it amounted to 
three pints. In about three hours it was full again, 
and a similar quantity was drawn. This seemed to 
he all that the udder would contain, and about the 
time required to secrete it. At this rate the mare 
was giving twelve quarts of milk a day, and very 
likely more, for the almost constant draft which a 
foal makes is a constant stimulant to milk secretion. 
The European goat-milkers, who drive their little 
flocks from door to door, and milk them as they sell 
the milk, draining them of the last drop many 
times in a day, get a great deal more milk than if 
the goats were milked but twice a day. We found 
that the mare above alluded to would get along 
without being milked, except when she was wanted 
for work, when it was of course best and most 
humane to empty her udder. It, however, was next 
to impossible to keep her away from her foal, or the 
foal away from her, if both were free and within 
sound of each others calls. The mare would manage 
to break down almost any fence, and the foal would 
leap almost any fence on the farm, so one of them 
had to be stabled all the time for nearly two months. 
Green Manure Crops. 
Cheap and good manure is getting to be more 
and more important every year. We are finding it 
harder to buy mannre, and more difficult to get 
concentrated fertilizers that are to be depended 
upon. Nevertheless, farmers make little use of 
green manure crops. It is hard to change old prac¬ 
tices sufficiently to plow under a good crop of 
clover or even of buckwheat. 1 have a very poor 
opinion of buckwheat as green manure. Rye is 
much better, and one can plow that under early 
enough to sow something else, to be either harvested 
or plowed under as the case may be. For instance, 
I witnessed the following successful treatment of a 
rough, stony, poor, gravelly lot, and hope to be 
able to carry out something quite similar myself 
this year: An old neglected lot, five acres of which 
would hardly pasture a sheep, was plowed and 
sowed with rye, which wintered well. A good many 
stones were picked off, and about the first of June, 
when the rye was heading well, it was rolled down 
and plowed under. Stones were partially picked 
off again—that is, the larger ones were—and about 
the first of July buckwheat was put in. Of this a 
good crop was harvested, and the straw, with a little 
addition of some other light manure, was spread 
back, and rye was sowed again in the autumn. This , 
gave another opportunity to pick off the stones, 
and the result was that when the rye was a second 
time plowed under, the quality of the soil was so 
good that corn was planted with fertilizer in the 
hill. Of this a very fair crop was secured, and 
other farm crops followed. Now if cow-peas could 
have been sowed at the last hoeing of the corn, they 
would doubtless have covered the ground well. 
Then they might have been plowed under just be¬ 
fore frost—as soon as the corn could be cut up and 
removed; then wheat or rye might have been sowed. 
Light, poor land, really needs a growing crop to 
cover the soil all the time. Rye offers several ad¬ 
vantages over other crops. It occupies the soil 
from October to June—eight months—during which 
time, when the ground is not frozen, the roots are 
absorbing nutriment and growing, so that when the 
warmth of spring comes the plant makes most 
rapidly the astonishing growth with which we are 
all familiar. It is a very certain crop, not being 
liable to winter kill. Besides, it is cheap, the seed 
costing seldom over $1.50 per acre. 
Red Clover is no crop wherewith to manure poor 
land, though one of the best for land in good heart. 
It must, however, occupy the land fully a year, tfut 
after a good crop has been plowed under and the 
land limed, almost any crop may follow. 
Feeding off before Plowing. 
We raise few green crops which may not be fed 
off with sheep before they are plowed under. Tur¬ 
nips, rye, clover, and cow-peas may thus he treated, 
often most advantageously. The difficulty I find 
is that I do not and can not well keep sheep. Feed¬ 
ing off with other stock is not so satisfactory. The 
manure is less evenly distributed, and the crop is 
less consumed than trodden down. It is important 
to save labor, and the advantage of green manuring 
is that all that great amount of labor in harvesting, 
curing, storing, feeding out the crops, and finally 
carting out the manure and spreading it, is saved. 
The actual value of any crop as manure is never so 
great as when it is plowed under just at the right 
time. When it is fed, we gain perhaps in other 
ways, but we lose in manure. This loss must he 
made up by the use of leaves, mold, muck, swamp 
hay, or other articles really foreign to the farm, or 
at least foreign to the arable land of the farm. 
In the vicinity of a large city, or of any locality 
where many horses are used, no branch of farming 
in more profitable than 
Taking Horses to Board. 
The price of board varies greatly, but it is never 
less than the value of the hay and grain actually 
consumed, estimated at the full market price. 
When one can get all the horses he can accommo¬ 
date, and has room for a goodly number, his for¬ 
tune as a farmer—a very moderate fortune—may he 
