Extracts from C. E.'s Common-Place Book.
Cheap food for horses, from M'Arthur's Financial Facts, 8vo. p. 258.
The author lived in London and kept three horses which he fed as follows.
Two trusses and a half of clover or meadow hay cut and mixed with four trusses of wheat, or barley straw, when cut up, make nearly equal quantities in weight; two heaped bushels of this mixture equal to fourteen pounds weight, are given to each horse in twenty-four hours, being previously mixed with half a peck of corn, (in England oats) ground or chopped, weight 5lbs. with water to wet it; that is, 7 pounds of hay; 7 pounds of straw; 5 pounds of meal; given at six different times, each day and evening. Add 5 pounds of hay at night, makes 24 pounds to each horse in twenty-four hours; and it kept them much fatter than with double the corn each day unground, two trusses of hay a week.
An ox, unworked, eats about 32 pounds of meadow hay per day.
An ox at work eats 40 pounds a day.
If fed in the stable each head of horned cattle will eat 130 pounds green clover just cut, or 30 pounds clover hay a day.
At work, 3 horses eat in all, 48 stones a week of hay, also 48 quarts of oats a week each horse.
At work 18 horses in 12 days, eat 430 stones of hay, which is 14 stones a week for each horse, also 64 quarts of oats a week for each.
An idle horse eat 14 stones of hay a week and no corn.