Milch Cows and Dairy Farming / Comprising the Breeds, Breeding, and Management, in Health and Disease, of Dairy and Other Stock, the Selection of Milch Cows, with a Full Explanation of Guenon's Method; The Culture of Forage Plants, and the Production of Milk, Butter, and Cheese: Embodying the Most Recent Improvements, and Adapted to Farming in the United States and British Provinces. With a Treatise upon the Dairy Husbandry of Holland; To Which Is Added Horsfall's System of Dairy Management

by Charles Louis Flint

“Fats, or oily matters of the food,” says he, “are used to lay on fat, or for the purpose of sustaining respiration.

“Starch, sugar, gum, and a few other non-nitrogenized substances, consisting of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, supply the carbon given off in respiration, or they are used for the production of fat.

“Phosphates of lime and magnesia in food principally furnish the animal with the materials of which the bony skeleton of its body consists.

“Saline substances—chlorides of sodium and potassium, sulphate and phosphate of potash and soda, and some other mineral matters occurring in food—supply the blood, juice of flesh, and various animal juices, with the necessary mineral constituents.

“The healthy state of an animal can thus only be preserved by a mixed food; that is, food which contains all the proximate principles just noticed. Starch or sugar alone cannot sustain the animal body, because neither of them furnishes the materials to build up the fleshy parts of the animal. When fed on substances in which an insufficient quantity of phosphates occurs, the animal will become weak, because it does not find any bone-producing principles in its food. Due attention, therefore, ought to be paid by the feeder to the selection of food which contains all the kinds of matter required, nitrogenized as well as non-nitrogenized, and mineral substances; and these should be mixed together in the proportion which experience points out as best for the different kinds of animals, or the particular purpose for which they are kept.”

“On the nutrition of cows for dairy purposes,” Dr. Voelcker still further observes that “milk may be regarded as a material for the manufacture of butter or of cheese; and, according to the purpose for which the milk is intended to be employed, whether for the manufacture of butter or the production of cheese, the cow should be differently fed.

“Butter contains carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, and no nitrogen. Cheese, on the contrary, is rich in nitrogen. Food which contains much fatty matter, or substances which in the animal system are readily converted into fat, will tend to increase the proportion of cream in milk. On the other hand, the proportion of caseine or cheesy matter in milk is increased by the use of highly nitrogenized food. Those, therefore, who desire much cream, or who produce milk for the manufacture of butter, select food likely to increase the proportion of butter in the milk. On the contrary, where the principal object is the production of milk rich in curd,—that is, where cheese is the object of the farmer,—clover, peas, and bean-meal, and other plants which abound in legumine,—a nitrogenized organic compound, almost identical in properties and composition with caseine, or the substance which forms the curd of milk,—will be selected.” And so the quality, as well as the quantity, of butter in the milk, depends on the kind of food consumed, and on the general health of the animal. Cows fed on turnips in the stall always produce butter inferior to that of cows living upon the fresh and aromatic grasses of the pastures.

Succulent food in which water abounds—the green grass of irrigated meadows, green clover, brewers’ refuse, distillers’ refuse, etc.—increases the quantity, rather than the quality, of the milk; and by feeding these substances the milk-dairyman studies his own interest, and makes thin milk, without diluting it with water, though, in the opinion of some, this may be no more legitimate than watering the milk.

But, though the yield of milk may be increased by succulent or watery food, it should be given so as not to interfere with the health of the cow.

Food rich in starch, gum, or sugar, which are the respiratory elements, an excess of which goes to the production of fatty matters, increases the butter in milk. Quietness promotes the secretion of fat in animals and increases the butter. Cheese will be increased by food rich in albumen, such as the leguminous plants.