The Somerset press. [volume] (Somerset, Ohio) 1873-1977, 1880-01-22


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 and culture
of the farm must depend greatly upon
the character of horses. The winter
season is one of comparative leisure for
horses, as farms are usually managed,
and farmers appear to think horses re-
quire little attention when they are not
in hard labor. They are in the habit of
keeping them upon poor hay and straw
at this season, reserving all grain for
spring feeding. But this is very bad
policy. Horses generally come to win
ter quarters in poor condition from the
summers 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
put on in winter represents SO much ex-
ira labor 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 few rations for work
horses in winter. Horses are often SUBJ
ject to cholic from improper feeding.
When fed upon corn meal alone, its large
percentage of starch renders it too heat
ing, and, besides, it is very concen-
trated 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 Cir
culate through it so as to properly per-
form its Office, and internal heat, fever
and collie often occur for want of proper
digestion. All such concentrated foods
should be mixed with cut hay, the hay
being just moistened so that the meal
will adhere to it. This mixes the con-
centrated 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 freely
through the mass and operates upon the
whole contents of the stomach at once
The best way to use corn meal, as a sin.
gle grain food, is to mix it with moist
ened clover hay. If the clover is oil
good quality, it contains larger per
centage of albuminoids (muscle-formine
foOd) than corn meal, and thus helps tt
| balance the constituents.
But one of the best rations for worl
horses is corn, oats and faxseed, grounc
together-the corn and oats in equa
weight, and to 10 bushels of the mixtur,
of corn and oats add one bushel of fax
seed, and grind fine al together. Tn.
corn and oats make we'll balanced "a
tion, and the faxseed is rich in oil
muscie-forming and BODYBUILDING ele
ments but its oil is its greatest sanitary
element. This small proportion of OF
is just sufficient to keep the bowels il
excellent condition, the coat sleek, ant
every part of the system in well BALANCED
activity. And then by feeding thi
ground mixture with twice its bulk o
Inoistened cut hay, you have as perfec
ration for work horses as can be com
pounded. ALI regular grist mills nov
have an apparatus for mixing differen
grains together, so that the farmer ha
only to carry the oats, corn or faxseed
in proper quantity, to the mill, and the,
will be mixed without hand labor. l
the farmer has no straw cutter, he ma,
use oat, or wheat chaff, to mix with tn
meal to render it porous.
In wintering horses that are doing bu
little work, straw may be fed with tn
last ration and the horses will do well
From eight to ten pouncs of this mea
each horse daily will bring them through
finely, even on good straw. When oat
are too expensive, corn meal and whea
bran mixed in equal weights, with one
pint of oil-meal to each horse, will Civ
a good result. If hay is scarce tw
pounds of decorticated cotton seed mea
four pounds of corn meal, four pound
of bran and straw will winter horse
we'll. But there should always be var
ETY. in the food. If tie farmer has clt
yer hay and straw, these should be mike
together-better if both be cut befor
mixing, but they may be mixed in th
manger without cutting.