682 MR. DICK ON COOKING FOOD FOR HORSKS. 
It is necessary to give, therefore, a certain quantity or bulk, 
to separate, perhaps, the particles of nutritious matter, that the 
bowels may be enabled to act properly upon it. A horse could 
not live so well on oats, if fed entirely upon them, as when a 
portion of fodder is given with them, a certain bulk is required. 
But this may be carried too far, and the animal may have his 
bowels loaded with too large a quantity of unnutritious food; 
and nothing less than such a mass as will render him incapable to 
perform any active exertion, will be sufficient to afford him even 
a scanty degree of nourishment. A horse living on straw in a 
straw-yard becomes pot-bellied. Hence it is, that a proper ar¬ 
rangement in the properties and proportions of his food becomes 
a matter of important consideration. 
Horses, like other animals, do not always content themselves 
with just eating what is necessary for their proper support; they 
are apt to indulge in any thing they find agreeable to their pa¬ 
late : and there is an immense variety in their food, if we look 
to the various grasses which are to be found in good old pas¬ 
ture, and by that indulgence they expose themselves to various 
diseases, and, for the time, render themselves unfit for any 
active exertion. If a horse’s bowels are loaded with clover, or 
any kind of food, we know he could not gallop any great distance 
without injuring himself. If he has been fully fed, and is 
allowed to drink freely of water, and afterwards started on a 
journey at a smart pace, the almost invariable consequence is, 
that he begins to purge; he is soon fatigued, he perspires from 
the weight he is carrying in his belly, he gets sick, and cannot 
go on. The natural action of the bowels throws off the load, 
and if the horse is not pushed on too fast, he is sometimes able 
to get well to the end of his journey ; but if his pace is increased, 
he gets sick, the load and mass contained in the stomach and 
anterior portion of the bowels cannot escape, and as exercise 
prevents and suspends the digestive process, a chemical pro¬ 
cess is set up in its stead, producing rapidly various derange¬ 
ments, which is too frequently followed by violent disease or 
death. This occurs less frequently in well-regulated coaching- 
stables, where a regular and large allowance of cats are given; 
because, as in coaching-stables, the quantity of oats is so large 
that little hay is eaten, the horses are therefore less liable to 
gorge themselves than under other circumstances : but even 
there, it is generally, nay, I may say invariably, considered ne¬ 
cessary to turn the horses round in their stalls for half an hour 
before starting, in order that the stomach may have time to act, 
in some degree, upon what has been taken into it, and that it 
may have passed into the bowels. The animals are, by this 
