This noble animal is in general use, and everywhere highly prized. By
the last census, we see that there are two thirds as many horses as cows
in the United States--4,335,358 horses, and over six millions of cows.
But, valuable as is the horse, he suffers much ill treatment and neglect
from his master. To give a history of the horse, the various breeds of
different countries, and the efforts to improve them, would be
interesting, did it fall within the limits of our design. The patronage
of the kings and nobility of England has done much to elevate the horse
to his present standard of excellence. It has now become the custom for
intelligent gentlemen in rural districts, in all enlightened countries,
to give much attention to the improvement of horses. Unfortunately, some
of that enthusiasm is perverted to the channel of horse-racing, a
practice alike injurious to horses and the morals of men. A few brief
hints are all we have space for, where a volume would be interesting and
useful. The farmer should exercise constant care to improve the breed of
his horses: it pays best to raise good horses. This depends upon the
qualities of the dam and sire, and upon proper feed and care. This is a
subject that farmers should carefully study from books and from their
own observation. The most important matter in raising horses, is care in
working and feeding. Nineteen out of twenty of all sick horses are made
so by bad treatment. The prevention of disease is better than cure.
Steady, and even hard work, will not injure a horse that is well and
regularly fed. But a few moments of crowding a horse's speed, or of an
unnatural strain on his strength, may ruin him. Let it always be
remembered that it is speed, and not heavy loads, that most injures a
horse. A mile an hour too fast will soon run down your horse. A horse
fed with grain, or watered, when warm, is liable to be foundered; and if
not so fed as actually to be foundered, he will gradually grow stiff.
Horses are liable to take cold by any unreasonable exposure to the
weather, in the same circumstances as men, and the effects on health and
comfort are very similar. A horse having become warm by driving, should
never stand a minute without a blanket. When a man goes from a heated
room, or in a perspiration, into inclement weather, he takes cold the
moment the cold or storm strikes him: in a few moments the effects on
the pores of the body are such that there is no particular exposure. It
is so with a horse. He takes cold when you are only going to allow him
to "stand but a minute," and during that time you leave him uncovered.
If you are under the necessity of doing an unusual day's work with a
horse, do not feed him heavily on that day. Unusual feed the day before
and the day after will do him good; but on the day of excessive work it
injures him. Never feed horses too much; they will often eat one third
more than is good for their health. Keep the bottom of the trough in
which you feed your horses grain, plastered over with a mixture of equal
parts of salt and ashes, that they may eat a little of it when they
please. When the water of your horse becomes thick and yellowish, or
whitish, give him a piece of rosin as large as a walnut, pulverized and
put in his grain. If a horse has the heaves, give him no hay or oats;
corn, ground or soaked, should be his only grain, and green corn-fodder
in summer, and cornstalks, cut fine, with a little warm water on them,
mixed with meal, should constitute his only food. All except a few of
the most confirmed and long-standing cases of heaves are _entirely
relieved_ by this course of feeding, and that relief is permanent as
long as the feed is continued, and it frequently effects a cure so
radical that the disease will not return on a change of food. To bring
up horses that have had hard usage and poor feed, and to secure growth
in colts, feed them milk. The milk of a butter-dairy is not more
profitably used in any other way, than fed to horses and colts. Give
them no water for two or three days, and they will readily learn to
drink all the sour, thick milk you will give them. Colts will grow
faster on milk than on any other food.
Horses should be often rubbed down and kept clean, and when put in the
stable wet, they should be rubbed dry. It is very essential to the
health of a horse that he have pure air. Stables in this country are
usually airy enough. But if the stable be tight, it should be well
ventilated. The gases from a wet stable floor are injurious.
Disinfecting agents are good remedies; a little plaster-of-Paris spread
over a stable-floor is very useful. These brief directions, followed,
will prevent most of the diseases to which horses are subject; or in
case a horse be attacked, he will have the disease lightly, as temperate
men do epidemics.