INORGANIC NUTRIENTS 159 



Weiske and Wolff, and contrary to popular opinion, common salt in no 

 way materially affects digestion or utilization of nutrient elements favor- 

 ably, providing that the animals in question receive normal and sound 

 feed (meadow hay for sheep, meadow hay, oats and wheat straw for 

 horses). However, additions of common salt to the ration are of de- 

 cided value in stimulating appetite, favoring the production of hydro- 

 chloric acid in the stomach, and thus aiding gastric digestion, and dimin- 

 ishing the injurious effects of less suitable feeding stuffs, and further, 

 increasing the deposit of proteins and inhibiting their breaking down. 

 Stimulation of appetite is indicated in the feeding of large quantities of 

 relaxing feeding stuffs (boiled potatoes, beet pulp, beets, meals, bran 

 and oil-cake slops, potato fiber and other insipid material) to fattening 

 animals and milk cows. But here too the requirements vary according 

 to locality ; in sea coast regions or other places where plants contain an 

 abundance of common salt in their composition, additional doses of salt 

 are hardly required. Animals may be provided with this nutrient min- 

 eral in the form of stock salt or rock salt. 



Stock salt (German product) is common salt denaturized by the ad- 

 mixture of ^ to ^ per cent oxid of iron, y^ per cent wormwood, and 

 a small amount of red clay and powdered gentian root. Rock salt (Ger- 

 man lick stone) corresponds more or less in its composition to stock salt, 

 or it contains variable amounts (10 to 14 per cent) of gypsum, magne- 

 sium and sodium sulphate. These German "lick stones" are by-products 

 of salt production from saline spring water, consisting of the residue or 

 waste remaining in the evaporating pans. 



(In the United States "stock salt" is merely coarse or impure table 

 salt, more or less pure, and rock salt is the natural product of salt mines. 

 — Translator. ) 



Daily doses for horses are J/2 to 1 ounce, milk cows ^ to nearly 2 

 ounces, fattening cattle 3 to 5 ounces, sheep ^ to ^ ounce, and swine 

 % to y2 ounce. It is not expedient to exceed these quantities. If com- 

 mon salt is given in excessively large doses, as, for instance, in the form 

 of brine, it exerts an action similar to that of other neutral salts, namely, 

 laxative, retards digestion and prevents full utilization of the nutrients 

 and may even cause disease. 



In exceptionally rare cases there may be a deficiency of potash salts 

 (in addition to deficiency of sodium salts) in the feed. This actually 

 occurs in sorfte regions of the Erz mountains (between Saxony and 

 Bohemia) and gives rise to diseases known among the populace as stable 

 ill (Stall Mangel, licking disease). Animals refuse their feed (hay, 

 drink and concentrates) and show a greedy desire for earth, manure, 

 rotten straw, wood, etc., emaciate, become constipated and die from 

 starvation. Postmortem examination usually reveals nothing striking 

 except emaciation and anemia. The basis of the trouble is an alkali 

 deficiency (especially salts of potash) and is technically known as halis- 

 teresis simplex, to distinguish it from deficiency of the bone-forming 



