ANIMAL GROWTH AND NUTRITION. 223 



four-tenths digestible proteine, and fort3^-five pounds and five- 

 tenths carbohydrates ; which shows a hick of a small per cent 

 of the requisite amount of the latter, and a very heavy one of 

 the former. How shall the amount said by the Germans to 

 be desired be filled ? The great food of the East has been 

 corn-meal. If now, to the hay-ration, twenty-five pounds of 

 corn-meal is added, about eighty pounds only of hay will be 

 eaten, and then we will have the sum of five pounds and 

 eighty-six hundredths proteine and fifty-two pounds and 

 eleven-hundredths of carbohydrates eaten, — an excess of the 

 latter, and still a heavy deficiency of the former. We have 

 given a carbonaceous food where a nitrogenous (proteine) 

 food was needed. Looking down the table, we find cotton- 

 seed meal rich in proteine ; and using it, we find that but 

 little over half of the quantity used in corn-meal, with 

 the lessened amount of hay eaten by its use, will give the 

 requisite amount of proteine, and very closely to the desired 

 amount of carbohydrates. In practice, I find that a hay- 

 ration alone gives me a growth, in average cases, of a pound 

 a day, — certainly not a full nor desirable growth. By the 

 addition of corn-meal to a hay-ration for growing steers, I 

 have found less hay to be eaten by nearly the weight of corn- 

 meal given ; but, owing to the superior richness of corn-meal 

 in digestible carbohydrates, an excess of carbohydrates has 

 been eaten, and the slight increase of albuminoids, or proteine, 

 in the ration, has been followed by only a moderate increase 

 of growth, and yet less than desirable. These facts, coupled 

 with the deductions of German investigators as shown by 

 the last table, leads to the following statements of some 

 of the accepted facts in the new science of feeding. 



The first is vktually a repetition of what has already been 

 stated, — the object for which an animal is kept cannot be 

 best attained, unless a proper proportion of each of the con- 

 stituents of a complete food is daily given. 



Again: the most economical use of a food cannot be made 

 where, although enough of each constituent is given, there is 

 an excess of one ; for that which is fed in excess is mainly 

 thrown off in the waste of the system. It would be bad 

 practice to add to a food already over- rich in albuminoids 

 another food relatively rich in the same constituent. It will 

 thus be seen that clover-hay for a growing steer of eight 



