PRESERVING BUTTER. Agricultural. HOW TO FEED HORSES. THR SCIENTIFIC VIEW.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2185, 10 July 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

PRESERVING BUTTER.

Agricultural.

HOW TO FEED HORSES. THR SCIENTIFIC VIEW.

In the course of a lecture on ' Horses ' recently delivered by Mr J. E. Russel, secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, the following statements occur : — 1 Hair growing in a thick tuft inside the ear must never be touched. Ignorant and officious grooms will remove it with scissors, but it is^a great defence against flies that would in its absence secure lodgement upon the sensitive skin inside the ear. Long coarse hairs upon the muzzle and the eyebrows are often plucked away. No horsormn should allow this to be done. These hairs are not superfluous ; they have a valuable use. They are like the whiskers of the feline race, having sentient power, and conveying impressions to the brain. The food should v.iry with the age, condition, and habit of each horse, and especially with the amount of work he is required to do. Some horses fatten easily; they are usually Round, strong animals of bilious temperament, that work without fretting-, and lie down whenever not eating", taking life in a moderate, happy manner ; such horse* are good feeders and need restraint. Others are nervous in temper, take life hard, fret over their troubles, and are poor sleeper* and slow eaters. Such need encouragement. The horse's stomach is the smallest similar organ to be found in comparative .anatomy. It holds but about haif as much as the horse needs to eat, eating no oftener than man. It is hard to find a horse asleep in a pasture. He goes to sleep in a stable, but when he gets out to pasture he eats nearly all the time. He is continually filling 1 himself with grass. That indicates that he has a rapidity of power with regard to oxygenation of the blood. The fact that the horse has no power to store bile indicates the grpat rapidity of his digestion and power of a«simila!iou. For such reasons he should be fed as frequently as convenient, and I con-ider, if a rule can be applied, that a horse should be allowed not more than 2 per cent of his weight a day in food ; that is, a horse weighing a 1000 lbs. should have 20lh. of food a day, half of which, when at hard work, may he grain. This in an abundant allowance, and in idle times should be reduced at lei.st a quarter. He should have what salt he requires, himself to be the judge. While I never would turn him to pasture, he should have some green food in summer and carrots in winter. Maize, whole or in meal, i* unfit food for horses ; it is"]heating and fattening ; no horspman wishes to sell a fat horse ; fatten steers, sheep or hogs but not horso* or men. Oats are the best grain for horsp, and the cheapest 'in the end ; if we had some means of crushing them they would be worth 25 per cent, more to us. If I was a miller I would put in a net of rollers and crush oats and in six mouths I would have all the business of my region. No man that has ever used crushed oats will have any other. The best time to water a horse is an honr before or an hour and a half after eating. Suppose his master takes him to thp watering-trough immediately after eating And his stomach is full of food and he drinks a pail or two pails of water, the consequence is a portion of the food is forced out of the stomach and is swept along into the larger iutpstincs without assimilation. In France I saw some horses fed on coarse beans, immediately after allowed to drink all the water they could, and then killed and dissected, and some of the beans were found 2b' feet distant from the stomach, in the intestines.'

TllK Detroit Free Press has,ttie following ' — • This is an ancient receipt, and givei butter a far superior taste to any other method ; lo persons whose means permit them to buy their provisions wholesale it is invaluable. Take 12lbs of good butter and add the following ingredients thoroughly powdered: — 2 oz. of (wltpetre, 2 oz. of fine loaf or best rrioist HUgar, and 6 oz. of common salt ; put your butter into a large pan, and with I your hands mix well with the above preparation until the whole is evaporated ; pack it in h wooden tub or wooden jar, then tie down very close and stand in a cool, dry place ; it should not be opened for six weeks or two months, when it will be fit for use, and present a rich marrowy flavour and fine colour. It never gets brittle or harsh, and is vastly superior to butter salted down to keep, as it never tastes salt or the least rancid. In the last century ' udney ' butter fetched the best prices in the market, which as soon as it came from the churn was cured as above. The reason why it requires from six to eight weeks before opened for use or sale is simply to allow the salts and sugar to be well blended and the coolness of the nitre to pass off. In an old work in the latter part of last ceutury it speaks of the different methods of preserving butter, and the above carries off the palm, with a note of the writer, who declares it, worth than 30 per cent, more than the ordinary method of salting down as carried on by large factories, and specially r p,dds that wooden vessels only be used as receptacles. I have tried and found it splendid, and advise all whose means are limited to a certain quarterly income when buying in their three months' stock of provisions to follow suit ; they will not only save considerably by so doing, but have a first-rate article at small cost. For every pound of butter one ounce of the composition is required.'