The heat of a stable should be graduated by a thermometer, always kept there for the purpose. Our feelings are but a feeble guide to our judgment in measuring temperature. It would be well that the stable heat should seldom reach, but never exceed, 50 degrees of Fahrenheit in winter, or 65 in summer. To renew the air, the stable should be well ventilated; and such ventilation should be as near the ceiling or top of the stable as possible, as the impure air ascends. The ventilators, sometimes seen, which revolve quickly on their own centres, are not, I think, good, because they occasion a draught of air; for which reason likewise windows should be so constructed as not to open directly on either the front or the rear of the horse. One of the best methods of ventilation is by means of one or more tubes or funnels, according to the size of the stable, which should be let into the ceiling, presenting below a larger end of twelve or eighteen inches square, which, as it ascends, should narrow at its summit to about four or five inches; and this should pass out at the roof of the building, having a raised cup over its top to prevent the wet from descending. Light appears essentially necessary to a stable; the exit from a dark one must be a painful stimulus to the eyes of the horse, and his imperfect vision makes him startlish and irritable. Dark stables are supposed to encourage feeding; and it is not impossible but the horses of eastern countries eat most during the night. It also, it is thought, induces them to lie down more. The greatest encouragement to the latter is a loose box, and to the former air, exercise, and soft water. Stables should be well ceiled, and that very closely: when this is not the case, not only does the dust from the hayloft fall on the horse, but it frequently enters his eyes; and the impure air, composed of nitrogen and ammoniacal gas, which always ascends, lodges in the hay above. In fact, it would be better that both the hay and corn should be altogether removed from the sphere of action of the ammoniacal effluvia of the stable, and only brought to the animals as they are wanted. Partial draughts of air in a stable should be carefully avoided, as extremely injurious to horses: a very lofty ceiling without an upper story, is the best preventive to this. Narrow stalls are very prejudicial to horses; strains in the back are often occasioned by them; and whenever a stall is less than six feet wide, the groom should have peremptory orders never to turn the horse out of it, but always to back. Bars or bails are also objectionable, from the ease with which horses may play with and kick each other over them, and likewise because it is seldom that horses eat alike in point of quickness; and thus, when they are separated by bars only, the slowest eater gets robbed of his food.
The acclivity of the generality of stalls is also a very serious objection to them, for they occasion a horse to stand unequally, and an undue proportion of weight is thrown on the hinder extremities: the declivity also puts the flexor tendons of both the hind and fore legs on a continual stretch, and by it probably many horses are injured. The smallest possible slope only should be allowed: neither is the central grating a remedy for this inconvenience; for it not only is useless as regards mares, but it is rather injurious, because it retains the urine, which thus continues to diffuse at every moment the effluvia it should be so much our study to avoid. It is much better that each stall should be furnished with a grating placed over a small drain at the foot of the stall, which should be so constructed, as to carry off the urine or washings from each horse into one common out-door cesspool perfectly secured against the access of the external air, that an injurious effluvia may not pass up through the gratings. Professor Peal, in his excellent Observations, has entered largely into the injurious effects of the ammoniacal exhalations arising from the urine: to these he attributes, in a great measure, the ophthalmia by which so many valuable horses are ruined. This separation of volatile alkali is not confined to the urinary secretion alone—it extends to the fæces also, and to both the sensible, and to the insensible perspiration. The urine, from the experiments of that able chemist, Dr. Egan, begins to separate ammonia in a few hours after its evacuation from the body, and there is reason to suppose that the fæces as readily fall into this early decomposition; therefore a necessity exists for their speedy removal also.
There is much contrariety of opinion relative to the propriety of permitting horses to stand during the day on litter; and there are cogent arguments for and against it. Litter entices horses to lie down during the day, which relieves fatigue, and is favourable to the recovery of over-strained limbs: it also prevents an uneven or hurtful pressure on the feet when it is cobble-paved. On the other hand, gross feeding horses are apt to eat their litter, which is not desirable. It is, likewise, too apt to retain the urine, and thereby to generate the acrid salts we have described. Constantly standing on straw makes many horses’ legs swell, which is proved by removing it, when such legs immediately return to their proper size: the warmth and moisture retained in it, likewise, are very apt to occasion cracks and swelled legs. Litter retained is probably injurious to the feet also; for if horn has a tendency to contract by the application of heat, the horn of the feet being placed so many hours within it, must be subjected to this additional stimulus to contraction. In my own stables no litter is ever suffered to remain under the fore feet during the day: on the contrary, the horses stand on the bare bricks, which in summer are watered to make them more cool. Behind, a little straw is strewed, because horses are apt to kick and break the bricks with their hinder feet, and because, when no gratings exist, or no slope is present, the litter thus placed sucks up the moisture of the urine, which would be detrimental to the hinder feet, which are more liable to thrushes than contraction.
The box is a necessary appendage to every good stable; indeed, it may, with great propriety, form a part of the stable: and I would advise that, whenever a new one be erected, so to frame it, that every standing may, by a moveable partition, be readily made into a distinct and separate box. It would be well, were in-door horses more generally accustomed to spend their leisure time in boxes than stalls: boxes are advantageous to the jaded horse, by encouraging him to lie down during the day; they are advantageous to the idle horse, by encouraging him to exercise himself. By means of boxes, the evils of long frosts to the hunter are avoided; and the unrestrained enjoyment of freedom is relished by all. A loose box wholly unconnected with the stable is also a valuable appendage to a gentleman’s establishment: it may thus with impunity be the receptacle of a contagious case. The detached box should be so constructed as to be capable of being cooled to nearly the temperature of the external air, or, when necessary, to be made as warm as requisite for some cases of sickness. No projections should be allowed in its walls to hurt the hips, in cases of falling from weakness, staggers, &c. It should, also, have a grate in the centre communicating with an outer cesspool, with a general slight bearing of the flooring to the grating: into a large box of this description, every horse taken up from grass should be first put, to prevent the access of the worst colds to which horses are liable, which are those caught on the sudden remove from a cool into a heated temperature.—White—Blaine’s Outlines of the Veterinary Art.
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Transcriber’s note:
Variations in hyphenation and spelling, excepting clear outliers, have been retained.