The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-05-16
A New Theory About Corn.

Correspondence Prairie Farmer.
Years before the war, when the cotton States
bought all their corn from the North, | resided
IN Louisiana, on Rapides bayou. | noticed that
people there Hoped" their horses all day long in
hottest weather Dead horses were rare objects.
But all along the bayou could be seen the car
casses of mules fed on by the buzzards. They
were fed on corn, worked and cared for by
slaves, were as fat as butter Not an ear of the
precious food was permitted to the horses it cost
too much,
During the days Of chivalry in Europe a
French king requested an agent to ascertain for
him the cause of the superiority of the horses of
the Turks and Nongolians. The agent rode from
Syria along up through the extreme parts of
eastern Europe. He reported TO his king that he
could see no reason for the superiority of the
horses there except in their mode of caring for
them. They fed nothing all day long, and dur
ing the night gave their horses only little bar
ley, with the native hay or grasses in abund
ance.
During the reign of Napoleon, Sonnini was
left in Egypt. and after long investigation he de-
elared the sole cause of the superiority OF the
horses of the Arabs was their food Barley was
the chief diet, with such straw or hay and grass
as could be procured. He therefore concluded
that barley was the food for horses, with hay
straw, ETC.
George Barrow, author of ''Bible in SPAIN a
most interesting writer of travels, tells us that
book that he started from Andalusia, so famous
for its mules and horses, with very excellent
stock, for Galicia, north Spain. AS he drew
near Galicia he was warned not to take fine
stock there, as, from some mysterious cause
good animals soon died in that place. Time and
again was he warned. As he entered Galicia the
landlord at the first hotel seeing his stock ex-
claimed, ''Senor, Why do you bring such fine
animals here2 You will lose them" ''Whyf
'Oh. there is something in the climate fatal to
fine stock" MAY be-" limited B., your food is
not goedh "Oh. no. Senorl We raise nothing
but the finest Indian corn ever seen. 1t is not
the food" In a very few days these animals
came near dying Mr.. Barrow never once sus-
pected the corn Strange blindness and perver-
sity, The truth is, when men realize that food
with little phosphates, furnishing little but fat
is utterly unfit for growing OF work animals or
laying hens, and that these creatures have been
developed by nature supplying varieties of food
adapted to them, and that following nature is
the true course for man, then we shall do away
with many evils that atfiict our stock. Little
harm could be done by any one food if a large
variety of other foods were given to our stock
By our abuse of corn in making it the chief diet
we have made it curse in this respect. The
heaviest burden our farmers have to-day is from
loss and disease of animals. When. for instance,
mules were worked hard all day long and at
night turned out to forage for themselves on
thistles and woody fbres, there was proverb
nobody ever saw dead donkey" Yet, owing
to bad roads and heavy carts, a mule had to toll
twice as hard as now, when big, fat, corn-fed
mules are dropping dead just like the beer
bloated porters of London, and from the same
bloated fatty degeneracy.