DISEASES OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 33 



experience that certain foods which they grow upon their farms 

 will cause the cow to give milk, and the pig to grow ; and they 

 are willing to feed the cow upon that class of food just as long 

 as they can see the stream of milk coming down into the pail. 

 They are willing to feed the horse upon a class of food that will 

 enable him to work, give him muscular vigor and strength, which 

 is on the same line only a little wider ration, one which has a 

 little more of what we call carbonaceous food. When the time 

 comes that they see no milk coming down into the pail, or we 

 will say while drying off the cow, when she goes dry either by 

 nature or by forcing her, what will they feed ? Anything that they 

 happen to have the most of and cannot sell. If they happen to 

 have an abundance of timothy hay, perhaps they will feed that. 

 When I speak of timothy hay I mean pure timothy when it is 

 worth about five dollars a ton. The farmer will say, timothy hay 

 is good enough food for any cow. He does not stop to consider 

 whether it is a balanced ration. The animal in order to get 

 enough of the muscle-making food to keep up its nervous vigor 

 must eat about two and one-half times as much of another ele- 

 ment as it needs. You may not believe it, but it is true, never- 

 theless, that timothy hay can be fed to a horse until he starves to 

 death. Corn can be fed to a pig until he gets so fat that there is 

 no blood in him and he starves to death. And a pig can be fed 

 on the finest bread that any lady can make and he will die inside 

 of forty days. It does not contain the elements necessary to 

 sustain all parts of the body. The important point I wish to 

 impress upon your minds tonight is this, that the dry cow, and 

 the idle horse need just as good a variety and as good a quality 

 of food when not working as when at work. If every man 

 understood that, and would simply reduce the amount of food, 

 or perhaps vary it a little bit, making it a little more carbon- 

 aceous, he would save trouble later on. Wliat do we mean by 

 that? A little later on the cow becomes fresh. Behold, there 

 is retention of the placenta ! That is a disease which is caused 

 by unbalancing the system during the latter stages of her preg- 

 nant condition. Nature did not design any such thing. It is 

 because nature's laws were violated in the feeding of that animal 

 during the time that she was not giving milk. Had she been 

 properly fed during that time, rare indeed would be the case in 

 which this would have happened. Perhaps the cow has a caked 



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