| Ounces. | |
|---|---|
| Fat-formers, or heat givers | 232 |
| Flesh-formers | 55 |
| Mineral matter | 29 |
Cost of Maintaining Animals.—The animal mechanism, which exhibits the least tendency to fatten, is the most costly to keep in repair, in relation to the work performed by it. If, for example, a sheep store up in its increase one-fifth of its food, then the remaining four-fifths are expended in preserving it alive, and their cost represents, so to speak, the expense of preserving the animal's body in repair. If another sheep store up only one-tenth of its food, then the cost of its maintenance may be said to be double that of the animal which retains the larger proportion of its nutriment in the form of flesh. Of course in both cases the value of the manure will to a great extent compensate for the cost of the food expended in merely keeping the animal alive; but that does not affect the proposition, that the less food expended by an animal in carrying on its vital functions the more valuable is it as a "meat-manufacturing machine." From the moment it is brought into the world until it is "ripe" for the shambles, an animal should steadily increase in weight: every week that it does not store up a portion of its food in permanent increase is the loss of a week's food to the feeder; for all the fodder consumed during that time by the animal is, so to speak, devoted to its own private purposes. Sheep overcrowded on pastures, milch cows on "short commons," calves kept on bulky innutritious food, are all so many sources of positive loss to the feeder—and as many proofs that he who aspires to be a successful producer of meat, must, in one respect at least, be a devout believer in the doctrine of Progressive Development.
Cooking and Bruising Food.—The cooking, or the otherwise preparing, of the food of the domesticated animals is a subject which until recently was completely ignored by the vast majority of stock feeders. It is now, however, beginning to attract a fair amount of attention; and no doubt ere long the best modes of treating the food of cattle will be discovered.
As might be expected from our limited experience of the subject, there exists considerable difference of opinion relative to the proper method of cooking cattle food; and there are many very extensive feeders who object to the plan altogether, and contend that as the food of the inferior animals is naturally supplied to them in a raw condition, it would be quite unnatural to give it to them in a cooked state.
Whatever difference of opinion there may be with regard to the propriety of cooking the food of stock, we believe there ought not to be a doubt as to the desirability of mechanically treating the harder kinds of feeding stuff. It is quite evident that a horse fed upon hard grains of oats and wiry fibres of uncut hay or straw must expend no inconsiderable proportion of his motive power in the process of mastication. After a hard day's work of eight or ten hours he has before him the laborious task of reducing to a pulp from 12 lbs. to 20 lbs. weight of exceedingly hard and tough vegetable matter; and as this operation is carried on during the hours which should be devoted to rest, the repose of the animal is to some extent interfered with. Indeed, it not unfrequently happens that a horse, after a hard day's work, is too tired to chew his food properly; he consequently bolts his oats, a large proportion of which, as a matter of course, passes unchanged through the animal's body.
In order to render fully effective the motive power of the horse, it is absolutely necessary to pay attention to the condition, as well as to the quantity and quality of his nutriment. The force wasted by a horse in the comminution of his food, when composed of whole oats and uncut hay and straw, cannot, at the lowest estimate, be less than that which he expends in an hour of ordinary work, such as, for example, in ploughing. The preparation of his food by means of water or steam power, or even by animal motive power, would economise by at least 50 per cent. the labor expended in its mastication; and this would be equivalent to nearly half a day's work in each week, and, consequently, a clear gain of so much labor to the owner of the animal. In the present time of water-power and steam-power corn-mills, one man is able to grind the flour necessary for the support of several thousand men; in early ages the labor of one person in the grinding of wheat served but to supply the wants of twenty others. In both cases machinery was employed for reducing the grain to flour; but in the one case, the mechanisms employed were more than a hundred times more effective than in the other. But even the most imperfect flour mill is by far a more economical system of comminuting corn than the jaws of animals; and if every man were obliged, as the horse is, to grind his corn by means of his teeth alone, he would find his powers for the performance of other kinds of labor considerably lessened.
It has been urged as an objection to the use of bruised oats by horses, that they exercise in that state a laxative influence upon the animal's bowels. I doubt very much that such is frequently the case, when the animal is fed only upon oats and hay and straw; but even if the oats produce such an effect, the addition of a small proportion of beans—the binding properties of which are well known—will obviate the disadvantage.
The desirability of mechanically acting upon soft food is not so apparent as the necessity for the bruising of oats is. Roots are so easily masticable that if they are rendered more so there is danger of their being so hastily swallowed as to escape thorough insalivation, which is so necessary to ensure perfect digestion. To guard against this danger, perhaps the best way would be to give pulped mangels and turnips mixed with cut straw; a mixture which could not easily be bolted. Mr. Charles Lawrence, of Cirencester, who is a great advocate for the cooking of food, and has frequently published his experience of the benefits derivable therefrom, thus describes his method of combining pulped roots with dry fodder:—
We find that, taking a score of bullocks together fattening, they consume per head per diem three bushels of chaff, mixed with just half a cwt. of pulped roots, exclusive of cakes of corn; that is to say, rather more than two bushels of chaff are mixed with the roots, and given at two feeds, morning and evening, and the remainder is given with the cake, &c., at the middle-day feed, thus:—We use the steaming apparatus of Stanley, of Peterborough, consisting of a boiler in the centre, in which the steam is generated, and which is connected by a pipe on the left hand with a large galvanised iron receptacle for steaming food for pigs, and on the right with a large wooden tub, lined with copper, in which the cake, mixed with water, is made into a thick soup. Adjoining this is a slate tank, of sufficient size to contain one feed for the entire lot of bullocks feeding. Into this tank is laid chaff with a three-grained fork, and pressed down firmly; and this process is repeated until the slate tank is full, when it is covered down for an hour or two before feeding time. The soup is then found entirely absorbed by the chaff, which has become softened and prepared for ready digestion.
Mr. Wright, near Dunbar, gives the following account of an experiment with pulped roots and straw and oil-cake. It appears to prove the superiority of mixed foods over the same foods consumed separately:—