170 



THE AGEICULTUllAL NEWS. 



June 2, 1906, 



THE USE OF COTTON 



By 



The recent de\('lopment of the cotton industry in the 

 West Indies is attended by the production of a large quantity 

 of a valuable feeding stuft' — cotton seed. Advantage is taken 

 of this fact to draw attention to one or two principles in the 

 rational feeding of plantation animals in the West Indies 

 with especial reference to the use of cotton seed. 



WEST INDIAN FOODSTUFFS. 



The foodstuffs available to the West Indian planter may 

 be broadly divided into classe.s, comprising locally grown and 

 imported materials: — 



(1) Cereals, such as Indian corn, oats, Guinea corn. 



(2) Cotton seed and crushed oil cakes, such as linseed- 

 cake-meal, cotton-cake-meal. 



(3) Green fodders (and hay and ensilage therefrom) 

 such as 'cane-meat,' sour grass, Guinea grass, imphee, woolly 

 pyrol. 



(4) Waste products of manufacture such as molasses, 

 mud-cake, cotton-cake-meal. 



THE CONSTITUENTS OF FOODSTUFFS. 



The chemical analysis of these various materials has 

 shown that they all contain the same essential constituents 

 Ijut in very different quantities. These essential constituents 

 are : — 



Protein or albuminoids, of which the gluten of flour 

 affords a good example. 



Fats. 



Carhohi/drdttis, such as the different kinds of sugars and 

 starches and crude fibre which exist in considerable quanti- 

 ties in all green fodders and their ha}' and ensilage. 



SEED AND COTTON-CAKE-MEAL AS A FEEDING STUFF 



ON WEST INDIAN PLANTATIONS. 



Professor J. P. d'Albuquerque, jSI.A., F.I.C, etc. 



herbivora as oxen, and is to some extent digested by them, 

 acting, to a limited extent, like starches and sugars. 



The larger proportion of a food ration will therefore 

 consist of carbohydrates, the smaller of protein. 



Carbohydrates (sugars and starches) are highly fattening 

 constituents of diet. To a certain extent fats and carbohy- 

 drates can take the place of one another : thus carbohydrates 

 when cheap and abundant are usually increased and the fats 

 dimini.shed. The increase, beyond a certain point, of fats is 

 not advisable or economical, as foods containing much fat 

 are difficult of digestion by herbivora, and an undue amount 

 of them may prove injurious. 



carbohydrates abundant, protein deficient, in 

 green fodders. 

 In the West Indies, as everywhere else, carbohydrates 

 are relatively abundant in the common green fodders such as 

 grasses and cane meat, but the protein* is scarce. There is 

 therefore no difficulty in supplying an abundance of cheap 

 home-grown carbohydrates, whether the object be the pro- 

 duction of work or the putting on of fat. The real difffculty 

 is to obtain an adequate, though relatively small, supply of 

 protein to replace the nitrogenous waste of working animals 

 or to build up the tissues of growing animals. 



COTTON-CAKE-MEAi A SOURCE OF PROTEIN. 



The importance of cotton seed as a feeding stuff' here 

 becomes manifest. The chief sources of protein in the West 

 Indies are oats, Indian corn, linseed cake, and cotton seed or, 

 better, cotton-cake-meal. Cotton-cake-meal contains nearly 

 three times as much jirotein as oats. 



THE FUNCTIONS OF PROTEIN. 



The inqDortance of these constituents will 



be best 

 realized by a consideration of the duties which they perform 

 in the animal organism. 



The protein is chierty concerned with, and is essential for, 

 the building up and healthy maintenance of the muscles, 

 glands, and nervous tissues, in fact of the living substance 

 called protoplasm, the active constituent of all living organs. 

 Protein is the nitrogenous constituent of food, and nitrogen is 

 an essential element of protoplasm. In the ordinary course 

 of life there is wear and tear and consequently waste of 

 muscular and glandular tissue. The nitrogen of this waste 

 or loss appears in the excreta in the form of urea, uric and 

 hijipuric acids, and must be replaced by the [jrotein of foods. 

 The amount of nitrogenous waste increases with the amount 

 or rate of woilv done by the animal. The amount of protein 

 in the diet nuist be correspondingly varied. In this waste of 

 jirotojilasm, which is made good by protein food, energy is 

 given out and ajjpears in the form of the work done by the 

 animal, and in the form of animal heat. The protein of the 

 food cannot, however, account for all the work and heat 

 produced by an animal. Nor can it account for all the fat 

 laid on in fattening, or the production of milk in lactation. 

 Only an excessive amount of protein, injurious and expensive, 

 could account for the work, heat, increase of fat or milk. 



THE FUNCTIONS OF CARBOHYDRATES AND FATS. 



The greater quantity of work and heat jiroduced by an 

 animal, and the greater quantity of the fat laid on are 

 [iroduced by the 'animal organism at the expense of the 

 carbohydrates (sugars and starches) and fats in the food. 

 Crude fibre .serves to give bulk to the food of such ruminant 



DIGESTIBILITY OF FOOD CONSTITUENTS. 



Before the protein, carbohydrates, and fats in a given 

 diet can be made use of by the animal economy, they must 

 be digested. That is, they must, in a more or less finely 

 divided condition, come under the action of the digestive 

 juices in the stomach and other parts of the digestive tract. 

 As a result of this action, the protein and carbohydrates are 

 dissolved and the fats converted into an ' emulsion ' like 

 milk. In this way they pass into the blood vessels and are 

 carried to the muscles and organs for use. 



It is found by actual experiment, however, that not all 

 the protein, fat, or carbohydrate in any food can be thus 

 digested. A part only of what we find by chemical analysis 

 is actually digestible ; the balance is lost in the excreta, being 

 useful only as manure. 



We therefore have to inquire — What are the total 

 amounts of protein, carbohydrates, and fats to be found in the 

 princi[ial West Indian foodstuff's, and what proportions of 

 them are digestible ? That question is approximately 

 answered in Table I. 



FEEDING ST.VNDARDS. 



The next question is — What quantity of digestible pro- 

 tein, carbohydrates, and fats should be given to the various 

 plantation animals in different circumstances * How much, 

 for example, to an ox resting, an ox moderately worked, an o.x 

 heavily worked ( How much to a mule resting, under 

 moderate, under heavy work ? How much to a milch cow, 

 and so on ! 



* Jamaica Guinea grass liay (see analyses by Mr. H. H. 

 Cousins, Wast Ind'uni BvHctin, Vol. Y, pp. lOG-7) appears to be 

 an exception tu this statement. 



