Ladies on Horseback / Learning, Park-riding, and Hunting, with Hints Upon Costume, and Numerous Anecdotes

by Mrs. Power O'Donoghue

I have related for you this anecdote, not merely for your amusement, but to teach you never to boast. A braggart is ever the first to fall, and nobody sympathizes with him. If you become ever so successful in your management of horses, do not exert yourself to proclaim it. Suffer others to find it out if they will; but do not tell them of it, lest some day you share the fate of the prostrate and discomfited major.

CHAPTER X.

FEEDING HORSES.‌—‌FORAGE-BISCUITS.‌—‌IRISH PEASANTRY.‌—‌A CUNNING IDIOT.‌—‌A CABIN SUPPER.‌—‌THE ROGUISH MULE.‌—‌A DAY AT COURTOWN.‌—‌ PADDY'S OPINION OF THE EMPRESS.

I said at the commencement of these pages that I should offer little or no discourse upon the general management of horses; yet, in one reserved instance, I may be permitted to break through my rule. If you want your hunters to thrive, do not let them have a single grain of raw oats. People have laughed at me when I said this, and have scarcely waited for the turning of my back to call me a mad woman; but a few of the scoffers have since come to thank me, and if you adopt my plan you will think that this little volume would have been cheap at a ten-pound note. There are, of course, times when raw oats must be given, for your horse may not always be in your own stable. At such times it is a good plan to mix chopped clover or grass through the feeding, taking care that grain and clover be thoroughly mingled. The judicious mixture of green meat will go far towards counteracting the binding effects which raw oats will be likely to have upon a horse not accustomed to it, and will also induce him to masticate his food, which an animal inured to softer feeding will otherwise be apt to neglect, wasting the corn by dropping it from his mouth in a slobbering fashion, making no use whatever of his grinders, and swallowing a certain portion without chewing it at all. I am, for various tried reasons, a thorough advocate for Mayhew's and Shingler's style of feeding upon cooked food, mingled, of course, with good sweet hay, or an admixture of the juicy grasses upon which the animal in its unfettered state would be prone to live.

In my stable-yard are a large boiler and an unlimited supply of good water. The groom boils sufficient oats to do for two or three days, and, when cool, mixes through it a small proportion of bruised Indian corn. On this the horses are fed as with ordinary oats three times daily, and so enjoy the feeding that not one grain is left in the mangers, which are placed low upon the ground. The surest proof of the efficacy of this excellent and economical feeding is that my horses never sweat, never blow, never tire. When other hunters are standing still, mine have not turned a hair; and, as prize-winners and brilliant goers, they cannot be excelled.

The principle I go on is this:—If I eat a cupful of raw rice, it certainly does me no good; but if I boil it, it makes three or four times the quantity of good, wholesome, digestible food, every grain of which goes to the nourishment of my body. And it is precisely so with the oats and the horse. In addition to this feeding, I give abundance of good, sweet, moist hay, varied by green food in summer, substituting carrots in the winter-time, of which vegetable they are particularly fond. The carrots are given whole, either from my hand or put loosely in the manger. I never suffer them to be cut up, unless it be done very finely, either by myself or under my supervision, to induce a delicate feeder to taste his food through which the chopped carrots are rubbed. Grooms, with their accustomed ignorance, are almost always in favour of the "cutting up," but I regard it as a most dangerous practice. If the carrot be left whole the horse will nibble at it, and will bite off just such pieces as he knows he can chew and swallow, but there is more than one instance upon record of horses choking themselves with pieces of cut carrot, and very many who have nearly done so. I can feed my horses upon this system for very little more than half the sum which my neighbours are expending, with advantages which are certainly fourfold. I consider it an excellent plan to vary horses' feeding, as it tells quite as beneficially upon animals as upon ourselves;—and for this purpose there cannot, in my opinion, be anything better than the forage-biscuits, manufactured by Spratt & Co., Henry Street, London, ten of which are equal to one good feed of oats, and are so relished that not so much as a crumb is suffered to go to waste. They combine all the most nutritious of grains, with dates and linseed added in such proportions as experience has pointed out to the inventor to be the best. They are then baked, and thoroughly dried, so that they are entirely deprived of moisture, and will consequently keep good for any length of time. The baking process being complete, they are, when eaten, practically half-digested,—or, as I may say, they present the materials to the horse in the most digestible form in which it is possible to give them. There are certain chemicals used in very minute quantities in the manufacture of these biscuits, which are productive of highly beneficial effects upon animals thus fed,—improving their muscular development, and imparting to their coats a peculiarly healthy and brilliant appearance. One feed of the forage-biscuits three or four times weekly is the proper allowance,—and they should be given whole, as the same objection applies to the breaking of them as I have set forth in my dissertation upon the cutting up of carrots.

I now desire to warn you that if you hunt in Ireland you must be prepared for the laughable and most ingenious frauds which the poor people—alas! how poor—will certainly endeavour to practise upon you. I can, and do most fully, commiserate their poverty, but with their attempts at imposition I have long since lost patience. Doubtless they think that everybody who hunts is of necessity a rich person, and conceive the idea that by fleecing the wealthy they will aid in blotting out the poverty of the land. Nothing delights the old cottage-woman more than to kill an ancient hen or duck on a hunting-morning, and then, when the hunt comes sweeping past her door, out rushes the beldame with the bird concealed beneath her apron, and throwing it deftly—positively by a species of sleight of hand—beneath your horse's hoofs, kicks up a mighty whining, and declares that you have "kilt her beauty-ful fowl!" I was so taken aback upon the first of these occasions that I actually stopped and paid the price demanded; but, finding that the same thing occurred the following week in a different locality, I ascertained that it was a trick and declined to be farther hocussed.

It is likewise a common thing for a man to accost you, demanding a shilling, and declaring that it was he who pulled your ladyship's horse out of the ditch or quagmire on such and such a day. You do not remember ever having seen his face before; but if you are a hard-riding lady you will be so frequently assisted out of difficulties that you cannot undertake to say who nor how many may have helped you unrewarded, and, being unwilling that any should so suffer, you bestow the coin, most likely in many instances, until you find that your generosity has become known and is consequently being traded upon.

I remember one day, a couple of winters ago, when returning from hunting, I lost my way, and being desirous of speedily re-finding it, I accosted a ragged being whom I saw standing at a corner where four roads met, and inquired of him the most direct route to the point which I was desirous of reaching. The creature hitched his shoulders, scratched his collarless neck, pushed the hat from his sunburnt forehead, and, finally, looking down and rubbing the fore-finger of his right hand upon the palm of his left, thus delivered himself: