HAY
—is the well-known article of grass, cut in its most luxuriant and nutritious state during the months of June and July; when the succulent parts, tending most to putrefaction, being extracted by the powerful rays of the sun, it acquires (if the season should prove dry, and favourable for the operation) a degree of fragrancy nearly equal to a collection of aromatic herbs. Hay, in this state, is a most attracting sort of ALIMENT to horses of every description, and is so truly grateful to the appetite, that it is often accepted when corn is refused. Of hay there are different kinds; as MEADOW hay, CLOVER hay, and SAINFOIN. The first is called natural grass, as the spontaneous produce of what is termed pasture land: the two latter are deemed artificial, as being cultivated upon arable land, and affording crops of only BIENNIAL and TRIENNIAL duration; when the fertility of which is so far exhausted, as to render a crop of the ensuing year an unprofitable prospect, the land is ploughed up, to undergo its regular routine of cultivation, when crops of this description are renewed, by sowing the seed previously preserved for the purpose.
Fine, rich, short, fragrant meadow hay, has by much the preference with the SPORTING world; as well as with all those who employ horses in light work, and expeditious action: it varies much in its property; not more in respect to the manner in which it is made, than to the soil it is produced from. Those who are anxious for the HEALTH and CONDITION of their horses, are always as judiciously circumspect in the choice of their hay as their corn; experimentally knowing, as much depends upon the excellence of one as the other. Hay produced from rushy land, or mossy moors, is always of inferior quality, and impoverishes the blood of the horses who eat it, in proportion to its own sterility. Those who inconsiderately purchase cheap hay upon the score of economy, will have to repent their want of liberality. Whether it is coarse, and barren of nutritious property, or ill-made, musty, and repugnant to appetite, the effect sooner or later will be much the same; and those who imprudently make the experiment, will soon find, that horses ill-kept, and less fed than nature requires, for the support of the frame, and the supply of the various secretions by the different emunctories, will soon display, in their external appearance, a tendency to disease.
Clover hay is produced in most counties in the kingdom; it is generally sown with BARLEY, sometimes with OATS, and least of all with WHEAT: it constitutes, upon dry ground, a profitable and convenient pasture in the autumn, and affords its general crop the following season. If luxuriant, it is mown twice in the same summer; but the second crop is not considered equal in value to the first. This hay is said, by those who ought to be the best enabled to judge and decide, superior to every other as to its nutritious property: this may be admitted in a certain degree, so far as its increasing the crassamentum of the blood, and proportionally promoting its viscidity; rendering horses who are constantly fed upon it (for instance, farmers horses) fuller in flesh, duller in action, and thicker in the wind, than those who are supported upon food of a lighter description. Although well calculated for slow and heavy draft horses, it is by no means adapted to those of expeditious action; for the blood thus thickened, becoming more languid or tardy in its circulation, would, when propelled through the vessels with great and sudden velocity, in hunting, or journies of speed upon the road, inevitably lay the foundation of different inflammatory disorders.
Sainfoin is rather an article of necessity than choice, and very little known in some parts of England, where nature has been more liberal in her diversity of vegetation: it is principally cultivated in the upland counties, where neither a meadow, stream, or rivulet, is to be seen for a great number of miles in succession. Many very extensive farms in the lower counties west of the metropolis, feel the want of pasture land, not having a single acre of meadow or natural grass in possession. Necessity, the mother of invention, has, however, so amply furnished a variety of substitutes, that their horses, and stock of every kind, seem equal, upon the average, to what is produced in any other part of the kingdom.