The ranch. [volume] (Seattle, Wash.) 1902-1914, 1908-05-15

THE greatest trouble with the milk
causing Indigestion and scour is met
with in mares that are in high cond1-
ton when they foal Some mares fail
year after year to raise their foals,
although they appear perfectly
healthy when born. Where this has
occurred start should be made to
remedy the evil before the foal is
born, treating the mare in way to
keep her healthy and avoid debility,
but at the same time seeing that she
is not over fat.
Where the secretion of milk at the
time of birth is insufficient, it is a
good plan to feed sloppy bran,
crushed oats, malt or boiled barley,
to assist in exciting the secretion, and
to keep the foal at the teats, and in
cite him to try them frequently by
by wetting them with cows milk. In
most cases the mare that has suff1-
cient milk of normal quality at the
birth of her foal, and that, within
few days of that event, is turned out
with her offspring, will rear 1t without
check, because such life approaches
most nearly to the natural but there
is often a good deal of trouble and
anxiety for the breeder who wants his
mare to divide her attention between
her foal and earning her keep and
rearing her foal Occasionally there
may be trouble owing to an altered
condition of the milk while the mare
is in season, but generally this is only
a passing disturbance, and in any case
one over which we have no control.
There are those who affirm that If
horse-breeding is to be successfully
carried out the mare should not be
worked while sucking her foal, and
that healthy, robust animals can be
reared only when the dam is free to
devote her whole time and strength
to the duties of maternity during the
five or six months usually set apart
for that purpose. There is a good
deal of truth in this contention and
there is no doubt that there Is deal
less trouble and risk of infantile dis
orders, and that better grown foals,
ready to wean earlier, are the result
when the mare runs with her off
spring over a good wide pasture and
enjoys the further advantage of some
thing out Of trough, than when in
addition to sucking her foal she has
10 TAKE u6I SudIo LII InC WI ~ VI Iho
farm. Much, however, depends on
the care and forethought brought to
bear on the matter, and some good
foals are reared on farms where it is
the common custom to put the mare
to work at the expiration OF six weeks
or two months, or when it is designed
to breed another foal, after they have
been served and tried.
Tt savors rather of the kind of econ
omy that is the reverse of profitable,
to have a mare working, carrying
foal, and sucking another; but so far
as we can see, it answers well, and
pays, where the system is judicially
worked. 1t does not, however, answer
where the mare is worked very hard,
or is underfed, or whore the mare and
foal are kept apart for long hours to-
gether. Under such circumstances the
mare is tired and heated when she
comes in and the foal, generally shut
I'D in an ill-ventilated stable, is des-
perately hungry. The mares udder
is distended and painful, and the colt
is nothing 10th to appease his appe-
tite on the heated, watery milk, re-
sulting from the hard work and long
fast; and if it does not suffer from
collie and scour as a consequence, the
effect of such a system of management
is soon visible In the appearance of
both mare and foal
It is bad to keep mares in close
confinement during CESSATION, since it