THE FEEDING OF ANIMALS.

This should be regulated by a variety of considerations. The young which may be destined for maturity, should be supplied with milk from the dam until weaning-time. No food can be substituted for the well-filled udder of the parent, which is so safe, healthful, and nutritious. If from any cause there is deficiency or total privation, it must be made up by that kind of food, meal-gruel, &c., which, in its composition, approaches nearest in quality to the milk. At a more advanced age, or the time for weaning, grass, hay, roots, or grain, may be substituted, in quantities sufficient to maintain a steady but not a forced growth. Stuffing can only be tolerated in animals which are speedily destined for the slaughter. Alternately improving and falling back, is injurious to all stock. An animal should never be fat but once. Especially is high feeding bad for breeding animals. Much as starving is to be deprecated, the prejudicial effects of repletion are still greater. The calf or lamb intended for the butcher, may be pushed forward with all possible rapidity. Horses or colts should never exceed a good working or breeding condition.

Purposes fulfilled by different Kinds of Food.

The objects designed to be answered by food, are to a certain extent the same. All food is intended to meet the demands of respiration and nutrition, and fattening to a greater or less degree. But some are better suited to one object than others, and it is for the intelligent farmer to select such as will most effectually accomplish his particular purposes.

The very young animal requires large quantities of the phosphate of lime for the formation of bone; and this is yielded in the milk in larger proportions than from any other food. The growing animal wants bone, muscle, and a certain amount of fat, and these are procured from the grasses, roots, and grain; from the former when fed alone, and from the two latter when mixed with hay or grass.

Horses, cattle, and sheep need hay to qualify the too watery nature of the roots, and the too condensed nutritiveness of the grain. Animals that are preparing for the shambles, require vegetable oils or fat, starch, sugar, or gum. The first is contained in great abundance in flax and cotton-seed, the sun-flower, and many other of the mucilaginous seeds. Indian corn is the most fattening grain. The potato contains the greatest proportion of starch, and the sugar-beet has large quantities of sugar, and both consequently are good for stall-feeding. The ripe sugar-cane is perhaps the most fattening of vegetables, if we except the oily seeds and grain. The Swedes turnip is a good food to commence with fattening cattle and sheep; but where great ripeness in animals is desired, they should be followed with beets, carrots or potatoes, and grain.

The table of the average composition of the different crops, which we subjoin from Johnston, shows the comparative qualities of various kinds of food, and it will be found a valuable reference for their nutritive and fattening qualities. He says, "In drawing up this table, I have adopted the proportions of gluten, for the most part, from Boussingault. Some of them, however, appear to be very doubtful. The proportions of fatty matter are also very uncertain. With a few exceptions, those above given have been taken from Sprengel, and they are, in general, stated considerably too low. It is an interesting fact, that the proportion of fatty matter in and immediately under the husk of the grains of corn, is generally much greater than in the substance of the corn itself. Thus I have found the pollard of wheat to yield more than twice as much oil as the

fine flour obtained from the same sample of grain. The four portions separated by the miller from a superior sample of wheat grown in the neighborhood of Durham, gave of oil respectively: fine flour, 1·5 per cent.; pollard, 2·4; boxings, 3·6; and bran, 3·3 per cent. Dumas states that the husk of oats sometimes yields as much as five or six per cent. of oil." The columns under starch, &c., and fatty matter, denote the value for respiration or sustaining life, and the fattening qualities; that under gluten, the capacity for yielding muscle and supporting labor; and saline matter indicates something of the proportions which are capable of being converted into bones.

Water.Husk or
woody fibre.		Starch, gum,
and sugar.		Gluten, albumen,
legumen, &c.		Fatty
matter.		Saline
matter
Wheat,16155510 to 152 to 4 J.2·0
Barley,15156012? 2·5 J.2·0
Oats,162050 14·5?5·6 J.3·5
Rye,12106014·53·01·0
Indian corn,14 15?5012·05 to 9 D.1·5
Buckwheat, 16? 25?5014·50·4?1·5
Beans,16104028·02 +3·0
Peas,13 85024·02·8?2·8
Potatoes, 75? 5? 12? 2·250·30·8 to 1
Turnips,853101·2?0·8 to 1
Carrots,853102·00·41·0
Meadow hay,1430407·12 to 5 D.5 to 10
Clover hay,1425409·33·09
Pea straw,10 to 15254512·3 1·55
Oat do.1245351·30·86
Wheat do.12 to 1550301·30·55
Barley do.do.50301·30·85
Rye do.do.45381·30·53
Indian corn do.1225523·01·74

This table, it will be perceived, is far from settling the precise relative value of the different enumerated articles. An absolute, unchanging value can never be assumed of any one substance, as the quality of each must differ with the particular variety, the soil upon which it is grown, the character of the season, the manner of curing, and other circumstances. An approximate relative value is all that can be expected, and this we may hope ere long to obtain, from the spirit of analytical research, which is now developed and in successful progress. More especially do we need these investigations with American products, some of which are but partially cultivated in Europe, whence we derive most of our analyses. And many which are there reared, differ widely

from those produced here, as these also differ from each other. What, for instance, is the character of meadow hay? We know that this varies as four to one, according to the particular kinds grown; and our Indian corn has certainly a less range than from five to nine.

The Changes in the Food of Animals.

Potatoes, when first ripe, are estimated to be worth, for feeding purposes, nearly twice as much as when old; and the relative value of the different kinds, varies greatly at the same age and under similar conditions of growth. Perrault ascertained by careful experiment, that hay, clover, and lucerne lost much of their nutritive qualities by drying, and in lucerne this loss amounted to about thirty-five per cent. This is an important consideration in the feeding of green and dry forage. Oats are among the best feed, both for young and working animals; but it has been found that they are greatly improved for the latter, and perhaps for both, by allowing the new crop to remain till the latter part of winter, before feeding.

The improvement by steaming and cooking food, is seldom sufficiently appreciated. Food properly managed, can never be made worse by cooking for any stock; although it has not been considered so essential for working, and generally, for ruminating animals, as for swine, and such as were stall-feeding. But the alteration produced in cooking, by fitting it for a more ready assimilation, must, as a general rule, add much to the value of the food, and the rapid improvement of the animal.

The effect of slight fermentation, or souring the food, produces the same result. Animals accustomed to this acid food, will reject what is unprepared when they can get at the former; and we have no doubt, from our own experience, that there is a saving in thus preparing it, from 20 to 40 per cent. A mixture of food should be supplied to all animals. Like man, they tire of any constant aliment. For such, especially, as are fattening, and which it is desirable to mature with the greatest rapidity, a careful indulgence of their appetite should be studied. They should be provided with whatever they most crave, if it be adapted to the secretion of fat. Cutting, crushing, and grinding the food; cooking, souring, and mixing it, are each by themselves an improvement for feeding;

and frequently two or more of these preparations combined, are of great utility in effecting the object proposed.

The Profit of Feeding.

It is evident, that this consists in a valuable return from the animal of the food consumed. In the horse, this can only be received in labor or breeding; in the ox, from labor and flesh; in the cow, from the milk, the flesh, and her young. In the sheep, it may be returned in its fleece, its carcass, or its progeny; and in the swine only by its progeny and flesh. The manure we expect from all; and if this be not secured and judiciously used, few animals about the farm will be found to yield a satisfactory profit for their food and attention; though it is evident, it should form but a small part of the return looked for.

Animals are only profitable to the farmer, when they yield a daily income, as in their milk or labor; or annually, by their young or fleece; unless it be in a course of regular improvement, either in their ordinary growth or preparation for the butcher. The animal must consume a certain amount of food merely to keep up its stationary condition, and to supply the materials for waste, respiration, perspiration, and the evacuations. These must first be provided for in all cases, before the farmer can expect any thing for the food.

Frequent observation has shown, that an ox will consume about two per cent, of his weight of hay per day, to maintain his condition. If put to moderate labor, an increase of this quantity to three per cent., will enable him to perform his work, and still maintain his flesh. If to be fattened, he requires about 4½ per cent. of his weight daily, in nutritious food. A cow to remain stationary and give no milk, eats two per cent. of her weight daily; and if in milk, she will consume three per cent. If these statements are correct, which it is certain they are in principle, though they may not be entirely in degree, it will require the same food to keep three yoke of cattle in idleness, as two at work; and the food of every two that are idle, will nearly support one under the most rapid condition of fatting. Two cows may be kept in milk, with the same feed that will keep three without.

No practice is more impolitic, than barely to sustain the stock through the winter, or a part of the year, as is the case in too many instances, and allow them to improve only when turned on grass in summer. Besides subjecting them to the

risk of disease, consequent upon their privation of food, nearly half the year is lost in their use, or in maturing them for profitable disposal; when if one-third of the stock had been sold, the remainder would have been kept in a rapidly improving condition, and at three years of age, they would probably be of equal value, as otherwise at five or six. It is true that breed has much to do with this rapid advancement, but breed is useless without food to develop and mature it.

CHAPTER II.
NEAT OR HORNED CATTLE.

The value of our neat cattle exceeds that of any other of the domestic animals in the United States. They are as widely disseminated, and more generally useful. Like sheep and all our domestic brutes, they have been so long and so entirely subject to the control of man, that their original type is unknown. They have been allowed entire freedom from all human direction or restraint for hundreds of years, on the boundless pampas of South America, California, and elsewhere; but when permitted to resume that natural condition, by which both plants and animals approximate to the character of their original head, they have scarcely deviated in any respect, from the domestic herds from which they are descended. From this it may be inferred, that our present races do not differ, in any of their essential features and characteristics, from the original stock.