ON THE MANAGEMENT OF THE FARM HORSE. 391 
perspire easily, lose their plumpness and rotundity, and are more 
disposed to pulmonary and catarrhal diseases; witness the losses 
that happen to dealers yearly in their horses passing from an inac¬ 
tive or torpid state to one of activity. For the farmer, the best 
winter feeding is the food that maintains vigour, supports the ani¬ 
mal’s tonicity and endurance under work, and lessens the excite¬ 
ment instead of increasing the functions of the skin and the kidneys. 
Exposed as the horse is in his daily labour to all the vicissitudes 
of the weather, and to the pitiless storm, for the fulfilment of this 
object nothing can vie, as I have before declared, with good oats, 
beans, chaff, and bran. The following is a suitable form in which 
cooked food may be given :— 
Cwt. Qrs. lbs. s. d. 
Turnips steamed.5 0 0 — 50 
Ground barley, 2 pecks, or 25lbs. 0 0 25 — 2 6 
Cut chaff, 1 bushel.0 0 10 — 10 
5 1 7 8 6 cost. 
Of this mixture about 20 lbs. weight is to be given once or twice 
a day, with two or three feeds of the horse’s usual ration of oats 
and chaff. The greatest profit the farmer derives from cooking 
food is that of boiling or steaming damaged wheat or barley, neither 
of which ought to be given in a raw state. There is no grain or 
pulse from which the farmer in the feeding of horses has sustained 
so much loss as barley and wheat. When injudiciously given, it 
but too often has proved a poison to horses, cattle, and sheep. In 
the horse it induces stomach staggers, inflammation, and obstruc¬ 
tion of the bowels, and frequently the death of the animal. 
Another very serious affection, of a character which lessens the 
value of the animal very sensibly, results from and is peculiar to 
wheat and barley; and that is “ fever in the feet,” or “ inflamed 
laminse.” I have seen as many as three horses in one farm stable 
labouring under this disease, the effect of giving barley, pur¬ 
loined from the corn house or barn by the carter. Its action in 
inducing fever in the feet is not correctly understood. Not being 
well suited for mastication in the horse, the whole grain gets into 
the stomach; there the gastric juice, having no power over the 
husk or unbroken envelope, it acts as a foreign body. And it being 
now an established fact, that gastric juice ceases to be secreted in 
the stomach when bodies are presented to it over which it has no 
action, the husk thus becomes an irritating bodv, and Nature, to 
protect its injurious effect on the coats of the stomach and intes¬ 
tines, envelopes it in mucus, and discharges it. In very many 
