lo Aug., ipoS-] T]ic Breeding of tlic Dairy Cow. 461 



be kept up, the heart must be worked to force blood through the blood vessels, 

 the lungs must be worked, energy is wanted for digestion and for a variety of 

 other purposes. All this is collectively spoken of as maintenance, and a ration 

 which just enables all this to be done with nothing to spare is called a maintenance 

 ration. If an animal is to lay on flesh, or to produce milk without losing flesh, 

 it must receive more than a maintenance ration, and the greater the quantity of 

 extra food the more there is available for flesh or milk production — up to a certain 

 point. 



Agriculture furnishes many instances of the law of Diminishing Returns, 

 but perhaps none better than this : The vitally important point to the farmer is 

 that up to a certain point an increase in the amount of food supplied gives a pro- 

 titable increase in milk, but beyond this point the increased milk yield no longer 

 pays for the increased food. Every man must decide for himself just where to 

 draw the line, but there are one or two general principles which furnish valuable 

 guidance. 



"In America the maintenance ration of dry, barren cows has been determined ; 

 but in Germany experiments have been confined to bullocks, and it is supposed that 

 the maintenance requirements of drv, barren cows, and of bullocks, are substantially 

 correct. The standard rations commonly accepted in Germany are those given 

 by Wolff^, and subsequently modified by Lehmann : — 



The WolfT-Lehmann Rations per 1,000 lbs. Live Weight. 



Digesible Nutriments in lbs. 



Mt^intenance only (bullock) 

 Cow giving 32 lbs. milk daily . 

 Cow giving 275 lbs. milk daily . 

 Fattening cattle 



The American rations art 



Maintenance only (dry cow) 

 Cow in full milk 



■' The last column, the nutritive ratio, shows the projiortion of fat and carbo- 

 hydrates to the protein ; and it will be observed that in these rations a dairy cow 

 is allowed more protein relatively to the fat and carbo-hydrate than a fattenin" 

 animal, and much, more than a store animal or a dry cow. An examination of a 

 number of rations shows that a cow requires for milk production a diet rich in 

 protein; highly nitrogenous substances, cotton cake, bean meal, &c., are wei] 

 recognised dairy foods. The value of a set of standard rations would be that 

 one could tell whether and to what extent a particular ration is abnormal ; it is, 

 for instance, well known that to feed to excess of protein is extremely wasteful. 



" The second point is that there is a limit to the yield of milk beyond which 

 the cow cannot go, no matter how much food is supplied to her. The limit de- 

 pends on the activity of the milk glands and the power of the animal to transform 

 into milk the food which has been digested and taken up into the body ; these 

 features are born in the animal, and their full development denends on proper 

 management. You may, and should, breed them, but you cannot put them iato 

 an animal that does not possess them. Some recent experiments made at Ofi^erton 

 Hall, Sunderland, by Gilchrist and Bryner Jones illustrate this well. Ten cows 

 at pasture were divided into two lots of five each, so arranged that the average 

 yield of milk per day was practically the same in each lot. During the experi- 

 ment one lot received concentrated food — a mixture of maize meal and Bombay 

 <otton cakes, together with straw chafl^ — and the other received none. The efi^ect 

 ■of the yield is given below : — 



Preliminary Trial — No Concentrated Food. 



Milk per cow per day. Fat per cent. 

 Lot t ... ... ... 30.2 pints ... 3.48 



Lot 2 ... ... ... 30.2 pints ... 3.46 



