HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN MENHADEN. 251 



and bitter experienco ahead of ur, and have learned the cause and the 

 cure. Necessity has driven them to study these problems in ways of 

 whose cost, extent, and beneficent results we on this side of the water 

 have as yet only a faint conception. Hundreds, we might almost say 

 thousands, of feeding experiments have been made with horses, oxen, 

 cows, sheep, goats, swine, and other animals. Some of the ablest 

 chemists and physiologists in Europe are devoting their lives to these^ 

 special investigations. Governments, universities, agricultural schools, 

 societies, and private individuals are giving money by hundreds of 

 thousands of dollars for the work. In the last ten or fifteen years in- 

 vestigation has been especially active. In twenty agricultural experi- 

 ment stations, and in a large number of laboratories of universities and 

 other schools, the studies are being carried on to-day, and already 

 definite knowledge has been obtained which many thousands of farmers 

 on the other side of the Atlantic are using to their profit, is beginning 

 to come to us and will, with what must be added by our wwn efforts,, 

 prove of inestimable value to our agriculture. 



The lessons our foreign brethren have learned so dearly are free to us 

 if we are wise enough to take and use them. Their substance is 'briefly 

 this: 



The advanced agriculture of the present day looks upon the farm or 

 the stable as a sort of manufacturing establishment. Domestic animals 

 are the machines, food in the form of hay, grain, root crops, commercial 

 food materials, &c., are the raw materials, and meat, milk, wool, labor, 

 and progeny the j)roducts. 



In cattle-feeding, then, the important question is, how, with the foods 

 at hand or obtainable, to get the most valuable product with the least 

 outlay for raw material. 



Feeding for maintenance and production. — Ingredients of foods and their 



functions. 



315. Suppose that I have in my stable a cow, standing idle and giving 

 no milk. She will require only food enough to supply the wastes result- 

 ing from the changes that are continually taking place in her internal 

 organism, from the continual building over and renewal of all parts of 

 her body. A certain amount of food of a certain quality is necessary, 

 then, to maintain her in good " store " condition. This she will need to 

 ^'hold her own" when nothing else is required of her. 



But suppose that I demand of my cow production, say in the form of 

 milk. For this purpose she will need more food. And, as everybody 

 knows, the cow should have for the production of milk, not only a 

 larger quantity, but also different quality of food from that which is 

 needed for maintenance alone. 



K, instead of milking my cow, I wish to fat her for the butcher, I shall 

 also require production, but of still another sort, of fat and flesh. And 

 if, instead of a cow, I have an ox that is to be kept at work, yet another 



