OVER-FEEDING WORKING HORSES.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5334, 24 January 1906, Page 4

OVER-FEEDING WORKING HORSES.

It is safe to say that numbers, of work-horses are injured by kindness. The owner thinks that because his team is worked hard it ought to be heavjjy fed, but he forgets that it is not what a horse eats, but what he digests, that counts. This is especially the case in summer, when there is much field work to be done and little time in which to do it. The horse hurries home, hot and weary, is given all he can ' hog,' and goes out to the watering trough, where he fills himself up with water, and goes on to work again. First of all, his stomach was not in a fit condition for the reception of food. The fatigued, hot, sweaty horse cannot digest food. He needs a rest first, and then a drink of water, which passes through his stomach and stays in the large intestines. If he first eats grain, and then drinks water, the food is largely washed out by the water, and passes to the small and large intestines, in which such food is not digested, but decomposes, gives up gas, and thus sets up more or less disturbance and distress. Under these circumstances a horse is not properly fed just because he has been furnished with six quarts of oats and all the hay he can gobble in the short interim of the noon hour. He has been fed, to be sure, but he has derived little benefit from his food. All the benefit derived comes from the portion of the food digested, and that is very small when there is not sufficient time first to masticate properly and then digest normally.