HORSEY HINTS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume IX, Issue 738, 20 January 1915, Page 3

HORSEY HINTS.

. TIPS IN GENERAL BY AN OLD HAND. One of the first considerations of the horseman is to make his best last as long as possible. A hcrse that is well cared for v,'lll look as young at fifteen as a care-lessly-managed horse will at five. One of the first considerations of the horseman should be regarding the bedding. There are some horses which take nearly all their rest standing, and are hardly ever to be found lying down. It is evident that the weight of their bodies being constantly on their legs, their legs are going to give out sooner than those of the horse that takes his rest lying down. If you examine some stables, it is not difficult to see why the horse does not lis down ; it is because their beds are not comfortable. Give a horse a really comfortable dry and springy bed, and the chances are ten to one that he will avail himself of it. • . Many, kinds of bedding are used for horses, but the two most in favour are straw and moss litter. Moss- litter is an excellent deodoriser, and a stable in which this bedd'ing is used generally smells very sweet. and clean, but, for that, very reason, the man . in charge of the horse is apt to neglect the necessary attention to the .bedding. Besides, moss litter never looks 'so comfortable as does a nice bed of clean straw.

Of all the diSerent kinds of straw, wheat straw is probably the best. It is long and tough, and proves more economical than other types of straw. Moreover, it is- not a sweet straw, and it is.not often that horses eat it. When you buy straw for bedding a horse, you should, g'ive attention to its quality, for. if it is darnp, or dusty, or broken, it will not last half so long as a better quality of straw would do. In making up a horse's bed you should never have all the straws lying one way. shake them up well, so that they cross one another, and so make the bed much more elastic and springy than, if the straws were all lying regularly. It is not necessary- to make a horse's bed right up to the stall, because when a horse lies down he usually gets well back, in fact, as far a?\ the chain attached to his headcollar will allow him. In regard to the feeding of horses, it must be remembered that the horse is: living in artificial conditions. The wild horse has no exercise demanded of him except in getting, from one place to another in search of better feeding, j and his needs in regard to f.odd are comparatively small. The horse as we know him, however, is worked much harder, and to enable bim to do his work we have to feed him up to it. That should always be remembered, and a horse should be carefully fed according to the amount of work he has to do. When a horse is being given a rest either because of illness or for any other reason, his allowance of such food as oats should be cut down considerably, for otherwise he will be accumulating an amount of energy? for which there will be no outlet in the usual form of woi'k, and he will become troublesome, and possibly; vicious.

Many mistakes are made in regard to the clothing of a. horse. Horses that are well ■ fed need very little clothing, even if they have been clipped, but there are many grooms who put on rug after rug upon their horses, in order to make their coats sleek and shiny, for/ rugging has this effect upon the coat, but it undermines the horse's constitution, and, makes him—just like a man who wears too many clothes—more likely to catch chills and other maladies than he would otherwise be. .

It is not every horseman who really understands the use of bandages. These are applied to a horse's legs to keep them warm, and thus induce a greater t flo.w of blood to them, and, therefore, a more rapid recovery of the muscles from the day's work.

Bandages also have the effect of reducing swollen legs. In. many cases they are extremely useful, and in no instances do they do any harm, provided they are properly put on. To put on a bandage properly you should start just below the knee in the case of a foreleg, or at the hock in the case of a hind leg. Turn the end of the bandage round the leg, and start rolling it downwards, taking a slightly slanting direction. Considerable practice is necessary to find just the amount of slant that should be given to,the bandage. The great thing is to see that it is sufficient to make the • bandage lie quite flat on the leg. When you reach the coronet the direction ot' the bandage will change automatically, and you will find it will turn upwards without any slackness of the cloth.

Continue rolling it upwards until the knee or the hock is again reached. Fix the end of the bandage with the tapes attached to it for that purpose, and be sure that the knot with which you fix it comes on the outside of the leg, for otherwise the horse may rub it until the tape comes loose.

.On taking ofi the bandage, roll it up as you. go along, so that it will be ready for use when next required.

When dealing with young horses, or horses liable to stumble, it is sometimes necessary to use kneecaps, which, though useful, are never ornamental. Their purpose is to prevept the horse's lcnees from in-

jugr if he happens to go down, but if the knee-caps are badly adjusted they are likely to do more harm than good. t To fix a knee-cap properly you should have the strap-at the top just tight enough to keep the cap from slipping down over the knee, and also to keep it facing the front, but the strap at the bottom of the cap should be left slack, to allow the knee joint perfect freedom when the horse is lifting his leg, A badly fixed knee-cap will make a horse fall. With regard to harness, the utmost attention should te paid not only to the careful preservation of the various straps, and the thorough burnishing and polishing of the metal parts, but also to whether the harness fits the horse perfectly. ' The majority of the skin wounds to which a horse is liable are due to ill-fitting harness, and particularly to badly-made saddles. It would be impossible here to lay down any instructions as to the remodelling or readapting of the saddle, and the best thing you can do if you find that it is injuring your horse's back, is to take it to the saddler's at once, and have it altered.

So far as the pleasant working of a horse is concerned, a good deal depends upon the way in which he' is bitted.

The majority of horses will work in almost any kind of bit, but there are many whose mouths or tempers are particular, and who require particular care in this matter. «, A vast number of diSerent kinds of bits have been invented, a great many of them with the object of making it easier to drive a pulling horse. In some cases a puller may be cured by changing him from a flat mouthpiece to a port, while in other cases, the mistake that has. been made has been to drive him with a Liverpool, or a We3 r mouth bit. -There are many horses which will pull hard with several bits, but will go as, well as you please with a n ordinary snaffle, provided that the driver has those delicate hands which are part of the art of horsemanship. Similarly a horse will often go q'uietly with a loose curb chain, and pull hard if it is tightened.—o. W. Pyatt, in "Modern man."