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CUPPING OF TROOP HORSES. 
I here append the orders which I issued for the winter These 
orders were published in the Battery Permanent Order Book, and 
copies placed in each stable and barrack-room so that all the men 
became thoroughly conversant with them :— 
(a.) Horses are never to be kept standing about in the cold 
without their blankets. 
(b.) On return from morning parades, and before the men quit 
the stables to change, the blankets will be thrown over 
the horses, and buckled in front, without removing saddles, 
and heels will be thoroughly dried. 
(c.) All inspections, previous to parades, will be done in stables 
by officers and Nos. 1, and “ turn out” will be sounded 
only in sufficient time to allow of " hooking in.” 
(d.) All horses proceeding on fatigues will invariably be accom¬ 
panied by their blankets, which will always be thrown 
over them when standing still. 
(e.) Each blanket will be marked with its horse’s number, and 
the drivers will be responsible for their care and safety. 
(/.) Blankets are on no account to be taken out to exercise. 
4. Aldershot is as trying as most stations to horses, and if the 
system of clipping could be adopted there with success, why should it 
not be made universal throughout the United Kingdom ? Battery 
Commanders say (and very properly too) that they cannot afford to 
provide blankets, and why should they be called upon to do so. 
Clipping might be sanctioned in orders, and blankets and clipping 
machines issued to regiments and batteries, and required to last a 
certain number of years, just as any other article of equipment, and I 
feel sure that in the long run it would be a benefit to the service in 
general, and certainly tend to make the mounted branches more popular 
for recruiting. 
5. The adversaries to clipping say that it tends to make a horse’s 
coat “ come rough ” in the summer, but I am bound to confess that 
my experience does not prove this, and, considering the average texture 
of the coat of a troop horse, I do not think that such a difference could 
be made, as to be used as an argument against it; while, on the other 
hand, the fact of clipping horses in the winter enables us to give them 
faster work and more of it, and to get them into, and keep them in, 
good hard condition, while those horses, which have been doing their 
work with their coats on, and have consequently had to be more or 
less “ nursed,” are quite “ soft,” and not nearly so fit to begin the 
hard work of the spring field days. If a horse be not clipped the 
fine dust and dirt which collect at the roots of the hair (and which it 
is impossible to remove, no matter how well he is groomed) tend to 
choke the pores of the skiu, and to prevent the natural excretions 
from the body passing off freely. The rougher coated an animal is, 
the greater liability is there of this occurring, and consequently his 
health is bound to suffer, and with it his condition. I quote here the 
opinion's of a well-known horse-master in the Regiment, Colonel Tyler, 
