108 



FISH FODDER FOR CATTLE. 



wholesome and nutritive fibrin of flesh, is now being dried and 

 ground into a powder, and sold under the name of Liebig 's meat 

 meal. This substance has now come to be recognised as a 

 useful kind of concentrated fodder, which will be more appre- 

 ciated as its nutritive qualities become better known. When 

 first introduced into Europe it was regarded with much suspicion 

 by farmers, who naturally considered such a substance as quite 

 inapjaropriate for the feeding of cattle or other herbivorous 

 stock. The only kind of farm stock to which it was considered 

 proper to offer such a fodder was the omnivorous pig, and in 

 1873 Professor Lehmann experimented with it in that way. 

 The pig is an animal that is able to make better use of starchy 

 food than any other kind of farm stock, and it is therefore able 

 to thrive fairly well on a diet consisting entirely of potatoes, 

 which are composed chiefly of starch, and contain very little 

 albuminoid matter. Flesh meal, on the other hand, contains 

 no starch, but consists chiefly of albumen. By mixing these 

 two substances together, a fodder may be produced containing 

 the essential elements of food in such proportions as to consti- 

 tute a very nutritious diet. Professor Lehmann fed four pigs 

 on a mixture of flesh meal and potatoes, and one upon potatoes 

 alone. The experiment lasted forty-four days, and the following 

 was the result : — 



The pigs that got the flesh meal in addition to the potatoes 

 gained 27i lbs. per head more in weight than the one that got 

 none ; and since all ate about the same quantity of potatoes 

 daily, the natural conclusion is that for every j)ound of flesh 

 meal they ate they increased more than a pound in live 

 weight. 



Liebig's meat meal has very little flavour, as all the soluble 

 salts have been dissolved out of it in making the extract, but 

 this is easily rectified by the addition of chlorides and phos- 

 phates of soda, potash, and lime. That was done in the 

 experiment mentioned above, and the great importance of 

 giving some potash salts along with flesh meal has been shown 

 from experiments made by Dunkelberg and Werner at Popples- 

 dorf. 



Later experiments by Haubner and Hofmeister have shown 



