AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
179 
simple remedy used in India should be tried 
—that is, to get a small rope and attach it 
to one of the fore feet of the stubborn animal, 
the person holding the end of the rope to ad¬ 
vance a few paces, taking with him the 
horse’s foot, when, as a matter of course, the 
horse must follow. The suggestion was at 
first ridiculed, but at last a rope was brought 
and applied as described, when the horse 
immediately advanced, and in a few minutes 
was out of sight, much to the amazement of 
the crowd. The experiment is simple, and 
worth a'trial. __ 
WHAT OUR STAOE AND RAILROAD COMPA¬ 
NIES PREFER AS FEED FOR HORSES. 
At a meeting of the Farmers’ Club in this 
city, last winter, at our suggestion, a Com¬ 
mittee, with Dr. Waterbary as Chairman, 
was appointed, to examine into the method 
of feeding adopted by the proprietors of the 
larger lines of stages and city railroads using 
horses and muj.es. These companies em¬ 
ploy from one to four hundred animals each, 
and carefully conducted experiments are 
made by them, in order to economize their 
feeding expenses as much as possible. The 
principal investigations were made by Dr. 
Waterbury, and we are glad to present a 
part of his report recently furnished us, as 
follows: 
“ The amount and kind of food consumed 
by animals depends on the amount and kind 
of labor they perform. Fattening animals 
are generally fed differently from working 
animals. Species and age make marked 
differences in the kind of food required by 
the same habits, climate and season of the 
year also, to a certain extent. Exercise 
produces, with animals, both an increased 
consumption of food and an increase in 
weight. Beyond this point there is increased 
consumption of food but a diminution in 
weight to a second limit, beyond which both 
are diminished,and the animal is “used up.” 
The Committee have received returns from 
the following stage lines in this city, as 
shown in the accompanying table : 
Stage Lines. 
Number of animals. 
tallies of daily, travel. 
Pounds of Cut Hay 
daily fed. 
Founds of Com Meal 
daily. 
Pounds of salt per 
month. 
Increase ol meal for 
the recent severe 
term of traveling. 
Red hird Stage 
Line . 
116 
17 
14 
18 
H 
3} 
Spring-street do.... 
105 
21 
14 
20 
4 
3 1-7 
Seventh-av. do .. .. 
227 
22 
10 
18} 
1 
2} 
Sixth-av. R. R.: 
1 Horses. 
117 
17 
10 
14 
2 
< Mules. 
211 
17 
10 
7 
2 
N. Y- Consolidated 
State Company.. 
335 
21} 
S 
17 i 
2-0 
2} 
Washing’n Stables, 
six livery horses. 
12 
** And six quarts of oats at noon. 
It is the object of the stage Proprietors to 
get all the work out of their teams possible, 
without injury to the animals. Where the 
routes are shorter, the horses consequently 
make more trips, so that the different 
amounts and proportions of food consumed 
is not so apparent when the comparison is 
made between the different lines, as when 
it is made with the railroad and livery horses. 
The stage horses consume most, and the 
ivery horses least. 
The stage horses are fed on cut hay and 
corn meal, wet and mixed in the proportion 
of about one pound of hay to two pounds of 
meal—a ratio adopted rather for mechanical 
than physiological reasons, as this is all the 
meal that can be made to adhere to the hay. 
The animals eat this mixture from a deep 
manger. 
The New-York Consolidated Stage Com¬ 
pany use a very small quantity of salt. They 
think it causes horses to urinate loo freely. 
They find horses do not eat so much when 
worked too hard. The large horses eat 
more than the small ones. Prefer a horse of 
1,000 to 1,100 pounds weight. If too small, 
they get poor and cannot draw a stage. If 
too large, they ruin their feet,' and their 
shoulders grow stiff and shrink. The princi¬ 
pal objection to large horses, is not so much 
the increased amount of food required, as the 
fact that they are soon used up by wear. 
They would prefer for feed a mixture of 
half corn and half oats, if it were not 
more expensive. 
Horses do not keep fat so well on oats 
alone, if at hard labor, as on corn meal or a 
mixture of the two. 
Straw is best for bedding. If salt hay is 
used they eat it, as not more than a bag of 
200 pounds of salt is used in three months. 
Glauber salts is allowed occasionally as a 
laxative in the spring of the year, and they 
eat it voraciously. If corn is too new, it is 
mixed with half rye bran, which prevents 
scouring. Jersey yellow corn is best; horses 
like it the best. They cut all the hay, and 
mix it with the meal and feed it wet. No 
difference is made between day and night 
work. The travel is continuous, except in 
warm weather, when it is sometimes divided, 
and an interval of rest allowed. In cold 
weather, the horses are watered four times 
a-day in the stables, and not at all on the 
road ; in warm weather, four times a-day in 
the stables, and are allowed a sip on the mid¬ 
dle of the route. The amount that the Com¬ 
pany exact of each horse is all that he can 
do. In the worst of the traveling, they fed 
450 bags per week of meal, of 100 pounds 
each. They now feed 400. The horses are 
not allowed to drink when warm. If allowed 
to do so, it founders them. In warm weather 
a bed of saw dust is prepared for them to 
roll in. Number of horses, 335. Speed va¬ 
ries, but is about four miles an hour. 
Horses eat more in cold weather than in 
warm, but the difference cannot be exactly 
determined. The Company are deadly op¬ 
posed to the Russ pavement; had rather 
have cobble stone. 
To the above we add an extract from a 
spicy letter addressed to the Committee 
during the investigation by Dr. A. Bigelow, 
of Attica, Ind.— [Ed.: 
** “ I am a great lover of horses—generally 
keep good ones, and do some fast driving in 
my business, and notice its effect upon 
horses ; and having used them five years in 
Vermont, and ten here, I will give you the 
result of my observation. Vermont horses, 
like its inhabitants, are almost invariably 
raised on plain diet, but if the former arrive 
at maturity without having the “ heaves,” 
and the latter consumption, they can beat 
the world for power of endurance. The 
horses seldom see oats or any other grain, 
till they are old enough to work, and then 
“ mighty little,” as everything there must be 
done up on the “ cheap.” The Indiana colts 
are generally allowed to eat all, or nearly all 
the corn they like, summer and winter, com¬ 
mencing as soon as they have teeth to masti¬ 
cate it. The result is, for fast driving, they 
are comparatively useless forever, though at 
slow work they do very well. When 1 first 
came here, I was struck with the multitude 
of diseases that horses are afflicted with here, 
that are seldom or never known in Vermont; 
and although some of them may be attribut¬ 
ed to the climate, I am convinced most of 
them are caused by giving them too much 
corn. These diseases are, in part, the fol¬ 
lowing: Stiff complaint, (something like a 
horse foundered all over,) fistula, sweeney, 
(perishing of the scapular muscles,) pole evil, 
general lameness without any apparent 
cause, and blindness, which is very common. 
Now, are not all these diseases nearly allied 
to the gouty inflammations that follow high 
living in the genus homo ! (Hope I do not hit 
any member of the Club.) 
A fine colt, that perhaps never had a halter 
on him, will be attacked with inflammation 
of the eyes-one or both-generally sclerotitis 
or conjunitivis, and in spite of knocking out 
the “blind teeth,” “ cutting for the hock,” if 
the corn diet is continued the eyes are lost. 
I find that if I keep a horse on corn instead 
of oats, he will surely “ fail up” sooner or 
later. He will endure through the winter, 
but it will tell the following summer, though 
corn be discontinued in the spring. I hap¬ 
pened, accidentally, to find a mare five years 
old, who was so vicious that her master 
could not use her, and he said he did not care 
a fig if she starved to death, and treated her 
accordingly. I bought her, tamed her down, 
and she is the first sound and hardy horse I 
have ever had since. I would like to give 
some of your Long Island boys a chase with 
her. Therefore, my directions for feeding a 
Western horse would be, to give him five 
ears of corn twice a-day, and all the good 
oats and hay he will eat; for a horse raised 
on corn, will grow poor on oats and hay 
alone ; but if he has been properly raised, do 
not poison him with corn.” 
DEAD HORSES, &«. 
Editor American Agriculturist: 
I would like to call the attention of my 
brother farmers to the following questions, 
and have them answered through the Agri¬ 
culturist. 
1. How long will it take a dead-horse to 
waste away, when exposed in an open field 
or left in the woods ! 
2. How long would it take a hundred crows 
to consume the carcase 1 
3. How many cubic yards. will he scent 
with his perfumery in a hot day of June, July 
or August. 
4. Which is the most savory, a dead horse, 
a dead cow, a dead sheep, or a dead lamb, 
cat or dog! 
5. If all these dead animals were hurled 
below the ground instead of being left on the 
surface would the public health suffer! 
Rusticus, 
