REMOUNT HORSES IN INDIA. 
489 
gusted with them at first; after three or four days in the train at that 
time of year they will look their worst. 
It must be borne in mind that these horses are arriving young, weak 
and unacclimatised, and their feeding and treatment at first must be 
very carefully supervised. If Government would make arrangements 
to keep all their remounts a full year at the depots before sending them 
to regiments and batteries, it would, in the end, save enormously by so 
doing, for many a horse is ruined by having to be worked before he is 
acclimatised and fit to do so. Some few horses do get so kept, and at 
the Oossur depot some years back, the young stock were nearly all 
there a year before being sent out, and benefitted greatly thereby, but, 
unfortunately, at the present time the horses are mostly issued some 
four or five months after their landing in the country. 
On their first arrival, therefore, you cannot work them much, for 
they are too poor and weak, and you cannot feed them highly, 
especially on gram, or they will at once get bilious or be purged. The 
ration grain given in India is gram or coolthi (both of the vetch tribe, 
and very heating), this feeding is entirely new to Australian horses, 
and must at first be very sparingly given to them for the above reason. 
I recommend a diet of 3 lbs. of boiled barley, 3 lbs. of gram and 4 lbs. 
of bran for the first two or three months. This can be managed, for 
although the Government ration is gram and bran, or coolthi and bran, 
arrangements can be made privately with the contractor to change 
part of the gram for barley, it can be very cheaply boiled by using 
cow-dung and refuse litter as fuel, on low fire-places built on the 
ground. 
Plenty of chaff should be mixed with every feed; to manage this 
every battery must supply itself with a private chaff-cutter as the 
Government does not provide them ; eight or ten pounds of green 
food should be given daily to the young horses until the rains break, 
about the end of June; this can, as a rule, be procured from the Com¬ 
missariat in exchange for dry grass, also in most stations there is a 
battery garden which, if properly worked, will supply a large quantity 
of green food at a very small outlay. At Mhow, I managed last year, 
between July and January, to cut some 120 lbs. a day of guinea grass, 
lucerne, Indian corn, carrots, &c., at an outlay of about four rupees a 
month extra wages to two syces, thirty rupees extra for labour, and 
say twenty rupees for seed, using a pair of battery bullocks to work 
the well. This year I could do still better, were I remaining on. 
On first being put to work you may find that the legs of some of the 
young horses will become filled now and again, if so, throw them out 
of work for two or three days, put them on mashes, give them four 
ounces of Epsom salts for a day or two and they will probably come all 
right; should any, however, shew symptoms of fever, and their mem¬ 
branes become tinged with yellow, give at once 12 ounces of Epsom 
salts, followed by four to six ounces of linseed oil until the bowels act 
freely, put the patient in a box, feed him on green stuff and mashes 
till the fever leaves him and the membranes become pink again. When 
the bowels act well, a ball of 1| drams of ipecac., twice a day and re¬ 
peated for two or three days, will greatly assist to clear the membranes. 
