DANGEROUS GREEN FOOD FOR HORSES AND CATTLE.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume III, Issue 214, 17 October 1874, Page 2

DANGEROUS GREEN FOOD FOR HORSES AND CATTLE.

Recently Mr. lost two cart horses worth £lso—one was found dead and distended in the morning, the other died in the course of the day, and another person lost two cows. Young green tares, especially when cut immediately after rain, are most dangerous, with the ordinary mode of placing them before animals in unlimited. quantity as cut by the scythe. The losses caused by this system in their annual total must be enormous. For 30 years we have avoided sueh losses by invariably passing all green food, tares, grass, Italian rye-grass, clover, and green beans through the chaff cutter. According to the condition of its growth we mix more or less fine-cut straw or bay chaff with it. This absorbs its superfluous moisture, and prevents flatulence, distension, and death. The same principle applies to pulped roots —pulped cabbage, kohl rabi, mangel—the latter being most dangerous early in the season unless so admixed. The cost of doing all this is a trifle as compared with the serious losses occasioned by its omission. The value of a single animal would pay the extra cost for several years. In fact, I have long since arrived at the conclusion that the turning out, roaming at large, and whole food system will be given up by those who prefer profit to loss. Over-ripe foods, either tares or clover, which are tough and indigestible require comminution, Of course, in such a case, being deficient rather than over full of moisture, they do not require straw chaff, or at all events very little of it. If horses are to have water it should be before eating green tares in a wet state, not after. Bean ifieal should be intermixed with or attached to the cut food in the manger, so that the animals cannot

take it unmixed. Our horses coming in from work are not allowed to drink cold water until after having eaten a little manger food. Where brewers have warm water they drink at will. Changes from old customs are often not easy, for ploughmen or horsekeepers are difficult to be converted where more care and more work are required. A ploughman finds it much easier to turn his horses into a field of nice clover and so spoil much of it, instead of having to cut it, bring it home, and pass it through the chaff cutter, and then mix it with other food. Youths growing up with the modern practice would naturally adopt it without objection, but it is difficult to convert old hands, and one must in sueh cases be firmly resolute. —F. F. Mechi.