Feeding on Board Ship should be confined to chaff and bran, mixed with about one-fourth the usual quantity of bruised oats.
Though horses generally look well when “full of flesh,” there are many reasons why they should not be allowed to become fat after the fashion of a farmer’s “stall-feds.” Some really good grooms think this form of condition the pink of perfection. They are mistaken. An animal in such a state is quite unfit to travel at any fast pace or bear continued exertion without injury, and may therefore be considered so far useless.
He is also much more liable to contract disease, and if attacked by such the constitution succumbs more readily.
Moreover, the superfluous weight of the cumbrous flesh and fat tends to increase the wear and tear of the legs; and if the latter be at all light from the knee to the pastern, they are more likely to suffer.
On the other hand, it may be well to observe, by way of caution, that it is by no means good management to let a horse become at any time reduced to actual leanness through overwork or deficient feeding. It is far easier to pull down than to put up flesh.
These hints on feeding may be closed with a remark, that in all large towns contractors are to be found ready and willing to enter into contract for feeding gentlemen’s horses by the month or year. This is a very desirable arrangement for masters, but one frequently objected to by servants, who, however, in such cases can easily be replaced by application to the dealer, he having necessarily excellent opportunities of meeting with others as efficient.
Contractors should not be allowed to supply more than two or three days’ forage at a time.
WATERING.
Horses are greater epicures in water than is generally supposed, and will make a rush for some favourite spring or rivulet where water may have once proved acceptable to their palate, when that of other drinking-places has been rejected or scarcely touched.
The groom’s common maxim is to water twice a-day, but there is little doubt that horses should have access to water more frequently, being, like ourselves or any other animal, liable from some cause—some slight derangement of the stomach, for instance—to be more thirsty at one time than another; and it is a well-known fact that, where water is easily within reach, these creatures never take such a quantity at a time as to unfit them for moderate work at any moment. If an arrangement for continual access to water be not convenient, horses should be watered before every feed, or at least thrice a-day, the first time being in the morning, an hour before feeding (which hour will be employed in grooming the beast); and it may be observed that there is no greater aid to increasing their disposition to put up flesh, than giving them as much water as they like before and after every feed.