HOW TO KEEP HORSES HEALTHY.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2053, 22 September 1880, Page 3

HOW TO KEEP HORSES HEALTHY.

The horse needs a variety of food, and daily exercise. Some persons feed condition powders and various tonics to horses, and they do at first make an increase of flesh, but if their use is stopped there is at once a reaction, the horse rune down in condition, and so the ultimate effect is injurious. The folly of continually feeding medicines and powders to a horse is analogous to that of a man who is compelled to keep his system up with daily tonics and drugs. Daily exorcise, work in moderate quantities, and well-prepared food, is much the best. Regular hours for being fed, careful and thorough grooming, pure air in the stable, pure water to drink, and in all ways, comfort, quiet, and cleanliness, will keep any horse in good flesh, and even make him fat. Horses sometimes eat immense quantities of hay and grain, but still keep poor and thin. In such cases the trouble is with the digestive apparatus. The food is not assimilated, and it must be changed until something better is found. One writer speaking of this, says that we should mingle flax seed, barley, oats, and corn, in equal proportions by measure, an 1 grind the mixture into fine meal; if oil cake can be had omit the flax seed, and add oil cake when the meal is fed. In either case feed the meal three times a-day, mixed with three quarts of cut hay, increasing the allowance daily as long as the animal will eat it up clean. Never allow a horse to aland at a full manger of hay, oat what he chooses, and waste the rest.