SHOULD FOALS HAVE OATS?

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume III, Issue 245, 6 February 1875, Page 2

SHOULD FOALS HAVE OATS?

I have n thriving foal three months old ; the mare is in excellent condition, upon good pasture. Some of my neighbours, I find, give oats to their foals of similar age. Will you inform me if you approve of this practice, and how much should be given ? Should you not think it advisable to do so, will you be so good as to state at what age giving oats should be commenced, and what quantity at first.—S. M. T. Warwickshire. [lf foals are to bo pushed along for show, if they are dropped late in the season, if the mares prove indifferent mothers, or if the pastures are poor and scant, a daily allowance of oats will be beneficial. Under no circumstances can oats injure foals. We never knew them to cat more than was good for them. They may be begun when a fornight old with a handful, which are better bruised, to induce digestibility. The example of the mare supplied daily with oats, ehaff, or other short food speedily encourages the young animal to pick and eat corn. At first the foal will only eat a few ounces, but by the time it has got used to it, and is three months old, it may have three or four pounds. When the foal has learned to eat, it may have its bruised food to itself, whilst the mare may be tied up in the shed, and kept content with a serving of less concentrated fare. In your own and various midland counties of England the dry summer and short pastures have compelled many farmers to fodder daily their brood mares, as well as their eattle stock, with hay. Indeed, so scant is the green food in the fields that fresh barley straw has since harvest been thrown on the pastures, and is cleared up as eagerly as it would For young thoroughor even for hunting foals, no subsidiary food can take the place of sound oats and good meadow hay. The boiled linseed or linseed cake, useful as an occasional medicament, and allowable enough iu moderation for cart colts, when given regularly, as it sometimes is, produces a beautiful sleek coat and imposing rotundity of form, but it also greatly favors tlie formation of bulky, useless fat, which is, of course, to be deprecated in young horses intended for fast work. Vet. Ed.] — North British turist. * Y