FARRIER, one whose employment is to shoe horses, and cure them when diseased or lame.
THE art of preventing, curing, or palliating, the diseases of horses.
The practice of this useful art has been hitherto almost entirely confined to a set of men who are totally ignorant of anatomy and the general principles of medicine. It is not therefore surprising, that their prescriptions should be equally absurd as the reasons they give for administering them. It cannot indeed be expected that farriers, who are almost universally illiterate men, should make any real progress in their profession. They prescribe draughts, they rowel, cauterise, &c. without being able to give any other reason for their practice, but because their fathers did so before them. How can such men deduce the cause of a disease from its symptoms, or form a rational method of cure, when they are equally ignorant of the causes of diseases and the operation of medicines?
The miserable state of this useful art has determined us to select, from the best authors, such a system of practice as seems to be formed on rational principles; this, we hope, will be a sufficient apology for being so full upon this article.
1. It ought to be laid down as a general rule, to
give horses as few medicines as possible; and by no means to comply with the ridiculous custom of some, who are frequently bleeding, purging, and giving balls, though their horses be in perfect health, and have no indication that requires such treatment.
2. Proper management in their feeding, exercise, and dressing, will alone cure many disorders, and prevent most; for the simplicity of a horse's diet, which chiefly consists of grain and herbage, when good in kind, and dispensed with judgment, secures him from these complicated disorders which are the general effects of intemperance in the human body.
3. In France, Germany, and Denmark, horses are seldom purged; there they depend much on alternatives; the use of the liver of antimony we have from the French, which is in general a good medicine for that purpose, and may, in many cases, be substituted in the room of purging.
4. As hay is so material an article in a horse's diet, great care should be taken to procure the best: when it is not extraordinary, the dust should be well shook out before it is put in the rack; for such hay is very apt to breed vermin.
5. Beans afford the strongest nourishment of all grain; but are fittest for laborious horses, except on particular occasions. In some seasons they breed a kind of vermin called the red eye, which is thought to be dangerous;
gerous; the best method in such a case is to procure them well dried and split.
6. Bran scalded is a kind of panada to a sick horse: but nothing is worse than a too frequent use of it, either dry or scalded; for it relaxes and weakens the bowels too much. The botts in young horses may be owing to too much musty bran and chaff, given with other foul food to make them up for sale; particular care therefore should be taken that the bran be always sweet and new.
7. Oats, well ripened, make a more hearty and durable diet than barley, and are much better suited to the constitutions of British horses. A proper quantity of cut straw and hay mixed with them, is sometimes very useful to horses troubled with botts, indigestion, &c.
8. Horses who eat their litter, should particularly have cut straw and powdered chalk given them with their feed; as it is a sign of a depraved stomach, which wants correcting.
9. The salt marshes are good pasture for horses who have been surfeited, and indeed for many other disorders: they purge more by dung and urine than any other pasture, and make afterwards a firmer flesh; their water is for the most part brackish, and of course, as well as the grass, saturated with salts from the sea-water.
10. A summer's grass is often necessary; more particularly to horses glutted with food, and which use little exercise: but a month or two's running is proper for most; those especially who have been worked hard, and have stiff limbs, swelled legs, or wind-galls. Horses whose feet have been impaired by quitters, bad shoeing, or any other accidents, are also best repaired at grass. Those lamenesses particularly require turning out to grass, where the muscles or tendons are contracted or shrunk; for by the continual gentle exercise in the field, with the assistance of a pattin-shoe on the opposite foot, the shortened limb is kept on the stretch, the wasted parts are restored to their ordinary dimensions, and the limb again recovers its usual tone and strength.
11. The fields which lie near great towns and are much dunged, are not proper pasture for horses; but on observation appear very injurious to them, if they feed thereon all the summer.
12. Horses may be kept abroad all the year, where they have a proper stable or shed to shelter them from the weather, and hay at all times to come to. So treated, they are seldom sick; their limbs are always clean and dry; and, with the allowance of corn, will hunt, and do more business than horses kept constantly within doors.
13. If horses, when taken from grass, should grow hot and colicky, mix bran and chopt hay with their corn; and give them sometimes a feed of scalded bran for a fortnight, or longer: let their exercise and diet be moderate for some time, and increase both by degrees.
14. When horses are foiled in the stable, care should be taken that the herbage is young, tender, and full of sap; whether it be green barley, tares, clover, or any thing else the season produces; and that it be cut fresh once every day at least, if not oftener.
15. When horses lose their flesh much in foiling, they should in time be taken to a more solid diet: for it is
not in foiling as in grazing; where, though a horse loses his flesh at first, yet after the grass has purged him, he soon grows fat.
16. Young horses, who have not done growing, must be indulged more in their feeding than those come to their maturity; but if their exercise is so little as to make it necessary to abridge their allowance of hay, a little fresh straw should constantly be put in their racks to prevent their nibbling the manger, and turning crib-bitters; they should also be sometimes strapped back in order to cure them of this habit.
17. It is obvious to every one, what care should be taken of a horse after violent exercise, that he cool not too fast, and drink no cold water, &c. for which reason we shall wave particular directions.
18. Most horses fed for sale have the interstices of their muscles so filled with fat, that their true shapes are hardly known. For which reason a horse just come out of the dealer's hands should at first be gently used. He ought to lose blood, and have his diet lowered, though not too much: walking exercise is most proper at first, two hours in the day; in a week or fortnight two hours at a time, twice a-day; after this usage for a month, bleed him again, and give him two or three times a-week scalded bran, which will prepare him for purging physic, that may now be given safely, and repeated at the usual intervals.
19. When a horse comes out of a dealer's hands, his clothing must be abated by degrees, and care taken to put him in a moderately warm stable; otherwise the sudden transition would be attended with the worst consequences.
1. Horses who stand much in stable, and are full fed, require bleeding now and then; especially when their eyes look heavy, dull, red, and inflamed; as also, when they feel hotter than usual, and mangle their hay.
Young horses should be bled when they are shedding their teeth, as it takes off those feverish heats they are then subject to. But the cases that chiefly require bleeding, are colds, fevers of most kinds, falls, bruises, hurts of the eyes, strains, and all inflammatory disorders, &c.
It is right to bleed a horse when he begins to grow fleshy at grass, or at any other time when he looks heavy: and it is generally proper to bleed before purging.
Let your horse always be bled by measure, that you may know what quantity you take away: two or three quarts are always enough at one time; when you repeat it, allow for the disorder and the horse's constitution.
Although the operation of blood-letting is generally thought to be pretty well known, yet there are many untoward accidents that frequently happen from the unskilful and inexperienced in performing it. The following directions and cautions on this head are extracted from Mr Clark's Treatise on the Prevention of Diseases incidental to Horses.
As horses are naturally timorous and fearful, which is too frequently increased by bad usage and improper chastisement, they require in some cases, particularly in this of bleeding, to be taken unawares or by surprise,