If your colt's mother is dutiful, and they mostly are, the youngster will have plenty to eat for the first few weeks. Petting is a good thing for little colts; never a cuff nor a harsh word. Their confidence won, their education is begun. While still dependent on the mother for milk the young colt begins to nibble hay from the manger, and gets a taste of the oats in the feed box, too, and finds them good. Oats and clover hay, a little bran and shorts, a run in the pasture every fine day all winter, will usually keep the colt growing and healthy. A warm stable with plenty of dry bedding, preferably in a stall with another colt, is necessary at night.
Colts need a plentiful supply of cool, clean water in summer, but in winter, water should be heated just enough to take off the chill. It is bad for a colt to drink at meal-time. (That sounds like a rule for boys and girls.) A chunk of rock salt handy for colts to lick at helps keep the appetite normal.
An ordinary farm colt at three or four months old is worth only thirty or forty dollars. Two years later, with the right kind of care and teaching, the same colt will bring four times that price. What other farm crop will do as much?
The mother of a baby colt once died on our farm. My father felt very badly over it; losing the old mare was misfortune enough, but the colt was a noble-looking little fellow, highly bred. We girls had been foster-mothers to almost everything; cats, pups, and pigs were easy, and calves. But what of a colt? "Let's try if we can't raise him on the bottle," said our mother. The experiments we tried with that colt were many. We gave him "half and half" at first—a cup full of milk to one of water. Our small cousin had once been fed on mare's milk, much to our disgust, but it gave us ideas for our colt. Mother read somewhere that cow's milk was not so sweet, but was richer than mare's milk. So we patched our bits of hearsay together and made up our colt's ration about like this:
First week: half sweet milk, half water, a teaspoonful of sugar to each pint, ten times a day—always warm—last feeding at ten P. M.—not very much at a time. Second and third weeks less water, six feedings a day, warm and sweet as before. Fourth to tenth week: increase quantity gradually, give warm—not very rich—milk three times a day. We gave him a bottle at first with a nipple made of a goose-quill wrapped each time with clean, soft rags. Everything about his food had to be kept sweet. We scalded the bottle and the quill and washed them in water and baking soda, just as mother said. Then we taught him to drink from a pail. He followed us about like a dog and was very playful and frisky. We fed him a little hay and oats and grass when he was old enough. My little sister wanted us to give him less milk so that he would grow up into a pony, but when he begged for food, she was the first to go for his bottle. He grew up and developed just like any horse and father said he was the easiest two-year-old he ever had to teach to work. He paid us seventy-five dollars for the colt when he was eight months old and ready to shift for himself with the other colts.
RAISING SHEEP
Every boy on the farm ought to have his own particular hobby in the line of stock. It is far easier to keep account of your own if they are entirely different from the animals raised by the other members of the family. An account should be kept with the animals, to learn whether they pay or not. It is only by this business-like method that the young farmer, or the older one for that matter, can know whether his animals are visitors or boarders.
If the mother keeps poultry, the boys pigs, and the father raises horses and cows, then why should not the girls raise sheep? There is room on every fair-sized farm for a flock. There is nothing about the care of sheep that a strong, healthy girl may not do if she is not needed to help with housework. Her father will teach and advise her. Tending sheep is far more healthful occupation and more remunerative than embroidering sofa pillows or knitting "fancy work."
Whoever undertakes the sheep raising must know first some of the needs of his favourites. They are grazers. They will glean a good living in stubble fields and crop grass in pastures where cows would starve; they will bite the weeds in the fence corners down to the quick nor leave one stalk to blossom or set seed. They are among the best and cheapest of lawn-mowers, enriching the ground they feed over. They are easy to care for, as they can take care of themselves most of the year. What a joy it is to take a quiet walk over the hills of a Sunday morning to salt the sheep! They are trustful, playful, docile creatures, and their presence undeniably adds to the picture of content and comfort that every homestead should present.
While it is true that sheep will keep fat on good pasture with plenty of water and a semi-weekly supply of salt, it is not to be supposed that they can pick up a living the whole year round in a cold climate. They do not need stuffing in cold weather, but they do need plenty of good hay in early winter and nourishing food like bran, oats, barley, and clover hay toward spring. Alfalfa is ideal, but many people succeed with sheep who fail on alfalfa. Sheep will over-feed if not restrained. They should have exercise and fresh air in plenty all winter. They should go out every day to pasture, except during storms, until snow covers the ground.