BREAD AND WINE

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 88, 8 January 1935, Page 13

BREAD AND WINE

A Diet For Horses OLD-TIME METHODS Mr. J. Fairfax-Blakeborough, a wellknown English authority, writes in “Horse and Hound”: “Recently I heard of a trainer giving his horses raw eggs mixed with their oats. This was at one time a common practice. I remember in the old days sluggish, lazy horses being given a third of a bottle of whisky before they ran. Recently I read that there has been such, an over-production of wine in France that it is selling for 4d. a gallon, and has been used for horses with considerable success. It is stated: ‘Red wine added to a small quantity of bran or maize has been found to have a greater tonic effect than much larger quantities of oats. A horse which was given two quarts of wine a day was found to increase over 501 b. in weight in a few weeks.’

“Now, as I have said, all this is only a reversion to ancient methods, when eggs, wine, and horse-bread were a regular part of the dietary of racehorses. Take, for instance,- ‘The Gentleman’s Recreation,’ written by Nicholas Cox in 1674. He directed: ‘lf you are to run for a plate, which is not till 3 o’clock in the afternoon, then by all means have him out early in the morning to air, and when he is come in feed him with toasts in sack, for you must consider that as too much fulness will endanger his wind, so, too, long fasting will cause faintness.’ Again, he advises: ‘lf he appear sluggish and melancholy, then give him half an ounce of diapente in a pint of good old malaga sack, which will both cleanse ,his body and revive his spirits.’ He goes on to advocate the use of horse-bread made as thus directed by de Grey in his earlier work: ‘Take wheat-meal one peck, ryemeal, beans, and oatmeal, all ground very small, of each half a peck, annisecds and liquorish, of each loz., white sugar candy 4oz ; , all in fine powder; the yolks and whites of 20 eggs well beaten, and so much whita wine as will knead it into a paste. Make this into great loaves, bake them well,, and after they be two or three days old let him eat, but chip away the outside.’

“Fairfax, in his ‘Compleat. Sportsman’ (1762), gives another recipe for making horse-bread, and there are variants in the works of other early writers. “I heard only last week of a York-’ shire trainer who had been giving a shy feeder in his stable bread to eat, which reminded me of the veteran Yorkshire sportsman, Mr. R. I. Robson, who used to say that he would feed his horses on golden sovereigns if it would make them win races. At one time, of course, bread was a common ration for horses and gamecocks, though that prepared and baked with meticulous care for racehorses was very different from the bread fed to the posthorses and others whose riders called at inns to ‘bait’ themselves and their mounts. The commoner sort appears to have been sold by public bakers, and in the manuscripts preserved in the archives Beverley Corporation are some very interesting references to the control of its manufacture and disposal. For instance, in 1458: ‘With the consent of the wardens, stewards, and six others of the craft of bakers, and three and others innkeepers, ordered by the Governors that the said 1 innkeepers shall not bake, nor cause to be baked in any way, any horse-bread, but shall buy it from the common bakers arid no one else; penalty, 3/4. The common bakers shall yearly for ever serve the innkeepers with such horse-bread good and sufficient-—viz.. 15 to the dozen, as often as required by such innkeepers. Provided always that if any of the innkeepers offer to redeliver any such horse-bread not used, the baker shall take back the bread, if the redelivery is made within four days in summer and six in winter,’ ”