320 = 
the horses during the winter. The loft being 
condemned in farm stables, a place must be pro- 
vided for holding the food and litter; the most 
convenient will be one or two divisions opposite 
the door, into which the food, whether green 
clover or tares in summer or hay or roots in win- 
ter, can be readily carried from without, and 
easily distributed within. Being near the door, 
the food will be better ventilated than it could be 
in any other part of the stable, and it will occupy 
the least valuable part with reference to the 
horses; it being well known that the horse that 
stands opposite to the door is more liable to take 
cold than any other. The corn-bin or chest may 
also be kept in one of these divisions, and it ought 
to be large enough to have separate apartments 
for corn and beans, and for cut straw or hay, or 
bruised furze, to mix with the corn or pulse. 
The door-ways should be 4 feet wide and 7 feet 
high; and the door must not have any projecting 
latches or handles, because they are apt to hurt 
the horses, or become entangled with the harness 
In passing out and in.” [Sproule’s Treatise on 
Agriculture. | 
A good degree of light in a stable, though not 
so much as to be glaring, promotes the comfort 
of horses, acts as a preservative of their sight, 
and prompts their keepers to maintain cleanli- 
ness and ventilation. Where little light is ad- 
mitted, the walls should be frequently white- 
washed ; and where too much or even a moderate 
degree is admitted, they should be painted grey. 
One or more windows should exist in every farm- 
stable, according to the size; and each should 
consist of two sashes, moving up and down by 
pulleys, or sliding past each other in grooves, 
and should be glazed with small panes in leaden 
divisions, and protected by a luffer - boarding, 
with the laths placed in a horizontal position. 
The maintaining of purity of air in a stable, 
by means of cleanliness and ventilation, is essen- 
tial to the health and vigour of horses. Scarcely 
one farm-stable in fifty is thoroughly cleaned 
out even once a-week; and the noxious effluvia 
from the accumulation of excrements, litter, and 
frequently green food of various kinds, in dif- 
ferent stages of decomposition, constantly exer- 
cise a baneful influence on the blood of both the 
horses and their keepers. The purer the atmo- 
sphere in which any animal is kept, the more 
vigorously and the more healthily will every 
function of the different organs of the body be 
performed, and consequently the inhalation of 
air impregnated with the stench of vegetable 
matter in a state of putrefaction, by corrupting 
the blood with which it comes in contact, viti- 
ates every secretion of the body, and in time, 
if it cause not actual disease, which is most 
probable, never fails, at all events, to produce 
languor and debility. The gases arising from 
the excrements of horses, too, act prejudicially 
upon the eyes,—a fact of which any person who 
will remain in a foul stable while it is being 
STABLE. 
cleaned may practically assure himself. Every 
farmer ought personally to superintend the care 
of his horses, and to insist upon his stable being 
daily cleaned out; and this operation, if regu- 
larly performed, will in the end occasion far less 
trouble than when filth of every kind is allowed 
to accumulate for days. The breeder of valuable 
horses in general is considerably alive to the 
necessity of attention to his young stock, while 
the man who has only an occasional colt or filly 
leaves the goodness of it pretty much to chance; 
yet the principle of obtaining for every horse a 
due supply of fresh air, and of keeping him in 
an atmosphere unimpregnated with noxious va- 
pours of any kind, is the same as far as regards 
the purposes of health, whether a horse be worth 
ten pounds or a hundred. During the act of 
respiration one of the component parts of atmo- 
spheric air becomes destroyed by coming in 
contact. with the carbon of the blood; and hence 
the air that is expired from the lungs, if inhaled 
again without admixture with fresh air, is defi- 
cient in those particles which should effect the 
chemical change in the blood, so necessary to 
life. For this reason, as well as on account of 
not allowing the noxious gases to escape, air- 
tight or closely shut stables are highly injurious 
to horses; and yet the practice of stopping up 
every aperture at night and excluding the air 
is very generally adopted by great numbers of 
people, alike ignorant of the injury they thus 
inflict upon their horses, arid of the mode in 
which their superabundant and ill-directed care 
operates prejudicially upon animal life. Many 
men, too, while endeavouring to put valuable 
horses in condition prior to offering them for 
sale, are in the habit of thus coddling them up, 
with a view to improve the appearance of the 
coat,—an advantage which is frequently gained 
only at the risk of exciting inflammatory dis- 
ease, and always with the loss of some portion of 
that sprightliness of movement and general 
vivacity so indicative of health and vigour. Yet 
mere perviousness to the air from the looseness 
of the doors or the craziness of the walls is very 
far from affording sufficient ventilation; and 
occasional free admission of the air by leaving 
the doors or the windows some time open may 
make such sudden changes of temperature or 
establish such strong cold currents as will seri- 
ously expose the horses to colds and inflamma- 
tions.* ~Apertures for the egress of the foul gases 
should exist in the roof or on the top of the 
walls; and apertures for the ingress of fresh air 
should exist near the floor;—and both should 
be covered externally by a grating, and so con- 
trived as to be capable of graduation. 
The littering of stables ought to have reference 
to the repose of the horses’ bodies during the 
night and to the protection of their feet from 
unequal pressure on the floor during the day; 
and therefore it ought in all stables to be more 
or less removed every morning,—in stables with 
eR  , 
