Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 January 1880 — Feeding Stock Horses. [ARTICLE]

Feeding Stock Horses.

Thu horse is the principal motive power on the farm, and therefore needs the best attention. This class of stock is kept wholly for its muscle, and the working .ana culture of the form must depend greatly upon the character and condition of the horses. The winter season is one of comparative leisure for horses, as farms are usually nmnaged, and farmers appear to think: horses require little attention when they ard not in hard labor. They are quite in the habit of keeping them upon poor bay and straw at this season, reserving all grain for spring feeding. But this is very bad policy. Horses generally come to winter quarters in thin condition from their summer's labor, and require judicious feeding and good care to recover their full working capacity; and farmers should remember that it is much cheaper to put horses in condition when work is very light, and that all the extra flesh pnt on in winter represents so much extra labor available in-spring.. Besides it should always be the aim of team-owners to keep their horses in good working condition, for it takes less food to keep up condition than to recover it when lost. Let us examine a few rations for work horses in winter. Horses are often subject to colic from improper feeding. When fed upon corn-meal alone, its large percentage of starch renders it too heating, ana, besides, it is a very concentrated food, and being just moistened with saliva so as to be swallowed, it goes into the stomach in the compact form of dough, and the gastric juice cannot circulate through it so as properly to perform its office, and internal heat, fever and colic often occur from want of proper digestion. AE such concentrated food should be mixed with cut hay, the hay being just moistened so that the meal will adhere to it. This mixes the concentrated with the bulky food, and the hay separates the particles of meal so as to render the mixture porous and the gastric juice now circulates freelv. through the mass and operates upon, the whole contents of the stomach at once. The best way to use corn-meal as a single grain food, is to mix it with 'moistened clover hay. If the clover is of good quality, it contains a larger per centage of albuminoids (muscle-forming food) than corn-meal, and thus helps to balance the constituents.

But one of the best rations for work horses is corn, oats and flaxseed, ground together—the corn and oats in equal weight, and to nineteen bushels of the mixture of corn and oats add one bushel of flaxseed, and grind line,'all together. The corn and oats make a well-balanced ration, and the flaxseed is rich In oil, muscle-forming and bonebuilding elements; but its oil is its greatest sanitary element. This small proportion of oil is just sufficient to keep the bowels in excellent condition, the qgat sleek, and every part of the system in well-balanced activity. And then by feeding' this ground mixture with twice its bulk of moistened cut hay you have as perfect a ration for work horses as can be compounded. AH regular grist-mills now have an apparatus for mixing different grains together, so that the farmer has only to carry the oats, corn, or flaxseed in proper quantity to mill, and they will all be mixed without hand labor. If the fanner has no straw-cutter ho may use oats or wheat chaff to mix with the meal to render it porous. 1 *■ ■■ In wintering horses that are doing but little work, straw may be fed with the last ration and the horses will do well. From eight to ten pounds of this meal to each horse daily will bring them through finely, even on good straw. When oats are too expensive, oomme&l and wheat bran mixed in equal weights, with one pint of oatmeal to each horse, will give a good result. If hav is scarce, two pounds of decorticated cotton-seed meal, four pounds of cornmeal, four pounds of bran and straw will winter horses well. But there should always be a variety in the food. If the farmer has clover hay and straw, these should be mixed together—better if both be cut before mixing, but they may be mixed in the taanger without cutting. —E W. Stewart, tn Rural New Yorker.