Note 25 — PREFACE. (continued 9)

The feed given to each horse, worked in the usual way is, a quartern of oats and a few beans, three times a day, with some chaff, or not, as may be desired. In the choice of oats, the shorter and fuller the grain the better; when bitten in two, they should be dry and mealy: they should feel hard in the hand, and when hard grasped should slip through the fingers; oats with thin bodies and long tails are the worst. When brought by sea, if they have lain long in bulk, they will have become heated, and have acquired a musty smell, to counteract which the corn dealers, when they are brought into their granaries, spread them thin on an upper floor, and turn them frequently, to cool, after which, they pass them through screens placed under holes in the floors, from the upper to the lower floors, which sweetens them much, and frequently enables the corn dealers to pass them off on inexperienced Coachmen and Grooms as fresh farmer’s oats, which latter it will always be best to buy. As horses should always be fed with fresh clean corn, it would be well to rounce them in a hair bag, which takes off all the tails and filth, and they should afterwards be passed through a sieve, to free them from dust and other extraneous matter, at the time of feeding.

The finest-conditioned horses in England are fed thus: When at grass, equal quantities of oats and old white peas; when in the stable, two thirds oats and one third old white peas.