The improvement of wet lands by liming, so as to lessen the amount of decomposing organic matter, and improve the character of the vegetation has proved very beneficial in different parts of England. The substitution for the products of marshy meadows and wet lands, of those of dry cultivated meadows and lands is important.
Misty cloudy regions in the vicinity of sheets of water, or cold mountain ranges cannot be made wholesome, but they can be abandoned for horse breeding, and devoted to more remunerative uses. Something may also be done by stabling the working horses at night.
An insufficient or debilitating diet, for example, in winter, should be carefully avoided, the more so if it is to be followed by a sudden access to rich grass in the spring.
All forms of spoiled food, damp, musty, or fermented fodders should be withheld, especially in the case of young and growing horses.
Indian corn, wheat and buckwheat should be carefully excluded from the grain ration or if used should be combined with 1 oz. sulphate of soda for each animal daily.
Damp, close, filthy and underground (basement) stables should be avoided, the building on the other hand should be placed on high, porous and well drained ground, and should be clean, moderately well lighted and well ventilated but without draughts. While such special stable hygiene is demanded for all it is doubly demanded for young horses under six years of age.
As every debilitating condition renders the already predisposed animal more open to attack, all causes of ill health should be guarded against, and especially for the young, and in the case of such as are inevitable, every effort should be made to curtail and lessen the evil influence. Food or water which contains the eggs and embryos of intestinal worms, must be avoided and parasites which have already invaded the system must be got rid of as far as possible. Care must be taken to exclude the various infectious diseases, and in case of their introduction, to adopt every measure to mitigate their violence and to prevent debility and weakness. Overwork and irregular feeding and watering must be guarded against.
At the same time moderate work or exercise daily which will develop the highest tone of the muscles, nervous system, digestion, assimilation and other functions is a measure that can never be neglected. Idleness with resulting fatness, softness and weakness of muscle, and lowering of the power of endurance is always an invitation to renewed attacks. Regular invigorating work is essential; exhausting work is injurious.
Change of locality to a drier soil, clearer, drier atmosphere, and more abundant sunshine, when it can be availed of, is a most important preventive measure. Reynal who made an extended official inquiry into this matter found conclusive evidence of its truth. Young horses removed from the low affected regions of Cantal, Poitou, Brittany and Anjou rarely suffered another attack when taken to the high land of Catalonia, and those moved from the damp lands of Franche Compté, Bresse, Dauphiny, Provence, Languedoc, Bassigny and Belgium to the dry, calcareous portions of Champaigne also escaped further trouble. In many such cases the eyes already slightly affected would materially and permanently improve.
Finally the influence of heredity is never to be over looked. The ideal system would be to have all stallions professionally examined, and licenses granted to such only as are free from this affection, and to place the owners of such horses under obligation to serve only, mares the eyes of which are sound. This might be enforced as a state or county ordinance. Serious difficulties it is true stand in the way of such a measure. The horse which has an extraordinary record on the track, and to the development of the ophthalmia of which, overwork has doubtless contributed, will be run after by breeders who seek speed at any cost, and it may be questioned whether the State has any right to interfere with the prospective profit which may be expected from the reproduction of the strain of blood. But aside from such fancy products as racers and trotters, this objection has much less force. For carriage, riding and road horses and for the draught and agricultural animal the advantage of sound eyes so greatly over balances all consideration of special values with imperfect eyes, that a statute which will prevent the propagation of such unsoundness is more than justified in every case. The importance of this will be admitted when it is considered that in the great majority of cases, the young animal is attacked after it leaves the hands of the breeder, and therefore a high price is secured for a subject which is almost certainly doomed to become blind in given surroundings. Such a law would work well in every locality. In the low, damp region where the disease prevails habitually, the unprofitable breeding would practically cease, unless a race could be secured which was proof against the infection. The value of such a race could hardly be over-estimated. On the high, dry lands, on the other hand, the natural tendency to immunity would be still further enhanced, as the most susceptible animals which contracted the disease, in even such a healthful district, could be in no sense fit for reproduction, and should therefore be doubly condemned.