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NOVEL EXPERIMENT IN HORSE FEEDING Methods and Results in Case of Azote the Milk Azote the milkfed horse ran iu the Knsom Derby made no showing and finished last at 200 to 1 Now Azote might and probably would have done the same thing if fed and raised according to ordinary methods It is more than probable that he is simply in the matter of speed a bad race horse horseBut But the experiment In his case Is not without a decidedly interesting side It seems to have wrought remarkably In the way of accelerating growth and maturing Such results In the case of Azote were attained in that line that some one may go further with it and with a horse or horses gifted bv nature with greater speed than Azote possesses Concern ¬ ing the case of Azote A C Koblnsou says in Outing OutingThe The race horse and the problem of its higher development Is a subject which for many years has occupied the attention of highly paid and highly Interested specialists Neither trouble nor cauital has been spared in the effort to bring out a horse that could run half a length faster than any otiiar and although the life of a racer as such is brief yet ithe returns from a Futurity winner both in money and glory are so large as to tempt a great many to enter the competition With so much capital and brains invested In the business or sport as some prefer to call it it is not surprising that such strides were made as would seem to leave little to the future With the uptodate method of shoeing nnd the perfection of breeding training and accoutering a horse for the track it certainly seemed especially after an American boy had Initi ¬ ated the present method of mounting and riding that the last word had been said What was there left dpThe to dp The first to come forward with an answer to this question was an American gentleman living in Paris and his answer was a daring one He said We will give the race horse a new food a food of animal instead of vegetable origin And he selected nothing more nor less than milk milkIt It seemed the height of absurdity No one had ever heard of any animal which had been reared to its full strength lived thrived and fulfilled its du ¬ ties on milk and to attempt such a tiling with a race horse which is called upon for the greatest possible expenditure of force and which had been studied pampered and thought over for generations seemed the height of extravagance Yet the experi ¬ ment was made and the fact is no longer dubious that a race horse can be brought to its full devel ¬ opment with no other food than milk milkIt It is a wellrecognized fact that the curse of milk is water This Is not said facetiously for while we shall speak later of what is sometimes called the baptism of milk we now allude only to the water which it contains as it comes from tiie cow This water however is eightyseven per cent of the bulk so that it can be seen at once that cows milk must be considered n highly diluted and therefore correspondingly unmitritious food The fundamental idea of dry milk is simply to remove this eightyseven per cent of water The process by which this is accomplished is very simple The milk as soon as possjble after it comes from the cow in most cases an hour or two is passed with ¬ out preliminary treatment physical or chemical ex ¬ cept straining over polished steel rollers in a thin sheet The rollers are heated to a temperature of 240 degrees Fahrenheit and the milk remains on them only about two and onehalf seconds It comes off the rollers a dry powder containing less moisture than flour only five or six per cent It is then packed in boxes or barrels and can be shipped faror near as required Its chemical com ¬ position has been unchanged and it will now keep for an indefinite period or until the readdition of water I myself have drunk milk more than two years old oldIt It was upon this milk powder that Azote was fed and surprising have been the results The considerations which led his owner to make the ex ¬ periment were founded upon the theory that food of animal origin contains more nutriment than that of vegetable hence the development resultant from a diet of the former should be more rapid than of the latter All theliest prizes are offered for two and threeyearolds But suppose by a new method of feeding a colt could be made to gain a year and while in reality only three years old have the growth and strength of four With this idea of rapid development in view the colt Azote was bought boughtHe He was taken from his mother when he was twentysix days old and started upon dry milk He received onehalf a pound of the powder mixed with two quarts of water every two hours and a half or eight times a day just like a baby He drank it from a pail in about a minute and that was all there was to his feeding He was weighed every morning at eight oclock and as lie grew the quantity of food was increased in proportion to his increase in weight After a time it was found advisable to give him a certain amount of hay not for any purpose of nutrition but in order to give bulk to the highly concentrated food upon which he subsisted He was given about onehalf as much hay as other horses receive This is all he has ever eaten a little hay and the milk powder mixed with water never any oats or corn and in this lies the novelty of tbe experiment Yet when we consider that one pound of dry sep ¬ arated milk contains as much musclemaking mate ¬ rial as five pounds of oats or corn and as twelve pounds of hay It was not so daring after all And besides dry milk is digested to the extent of ninety eight per cent oats and corn to sixtyfive per cent and hay only thirtyfive per cent The advantages of this last fact are obvious for besides receiving more nourishment in proportion to the bulk it requires only twentysix hours for dry milk to pass through the intestines whereas ordinary food takes three to four days so that there is much less waste ma ¬ terial and a horse during a race carries over the course much less dead weight It is just as if his handicap had been cut down downAt At the present writing Azote is three years old and eats seventeen pounds of dry milk per day which is the equivalent of a little over eighty quarts of separate milk or about the yield of eight good cows It is obvious that no horse could drink eighty quarts of fluid in a day but by the drying process Azote is enabled to get all the fowl in these eighty quarts without being obliged to drink more than thirty quarts of Hnuld HnuldOn On paper the experiment should work out as follows Azote gets twentyeight thousand food units or calories as they are chemically called a day Other race horses receive twenty thousand It is estimated that twelve thousand are needed by a horse for the maintenance of the animal functions thus the ordinary horse has eight thousand calories left over for work while Azote has sixteen thous ¬ and or twice as much Hence he should be capable of a much greater amount of work or a more severe training trainingIt It is established beyond question that a horse can be brought up and worked more than ordinary horses on milk Furthermore Azote readied his maximum weight and development 1012 pound In the un ¬ precedented time of eighteen months and ten days or an average gain during the T 4t days of feeding of over one and onehalf pounds per day dayOrdinary Ordinary horses take two and onehalf years to reach their full weight development and their aver ¬ age gain per day is less than one pound Another astonishing fact and one of which lie is the only living example Is that he had all his threeyearold teeth when he was two years and two months It would seem that the day when the wise ones could teli the age of a horse iby looking in his mouth was past
