6i 



DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 



[CnAP. I. 



fiiniislies phosphate for bones, which another article is destitute of, yet it 

 may contain matter that will clothe the bones with muscle. Food that con- 

 tains neither fat nor sugar M-ill be found sufficient to keep up the animal 

 heat. Food that contained all the elements of bone, muscle, liber, fat, and 

 heat-producing qualities, might be so concentrated as to be unhealthy. 



A num fed upon pemmican, would have a disposition to cat straw, liusks, 

 and twigs, or gnaw the bark from trees, to get soinethiiig to distend the 

 stomach and enable it to perform its functions healthily. Let this be thouglit 

 of in feeding domestic animals. It will furnish an easy rule for your 

 guidance. Judge theni by yourself, and act accordingly ; you will "iind it 

 an easy and sure road to success. We do not for animals, quadruped or 

 biped, recommend a variety of food at the same meal — only a change from 

 time to time, so as to give variety, and consequently all the elements neces- 

 sary to produce growth. 



• Never neglect to give your cattle water until you learn to do without it 

 yourself, and never oflor them drink where you would vomit if compelled 

 to slake your own thirst. 



Never leave a horse, a cow, a sheep, out in a cold winter storm, until you 

 arrive at that condition of unfoelingness that you could endure it yourielf. 

 When you think you could find comfortable shelter under a. common rail 

 fence, you may leave your cattle there. No domestic animal can ever reach 

 the highest state of perfection its nature is capable of unless always kept in 

 a healthy, growing condition, in an equable climate, or in warm shelter if 

 the inhabitant of a cold one. 



Farmers do ftot jiay sufficient attention to the warmth of their stock, but 

 suffer them to roam about in the open air, exposed to the inclement weather. 

 The amount of exercise is another most important point to attend to. The 

 more an animal moves about, the quicker it will breathe, and the more 

 starch, gum, sugar, fat, and other respiratory elements it must have in its 

 food ; and if an additional quantity of these substances be not given to 

 supply the increased demand, the fat and other parts of the body will be 

 drawn upon, and the animal will become thinner ; also, as before observed, 

 every motion of the body produces a corresponding destruction of the mus- 

 cles which produce that motion. It is therefore quite evident that the more 

 the aniuial moves about, the more of the heat-producing and flesh-forming 

 priucijtle it must receive in its food. Hence avc see the propriety of keeping 

 our cattle in sheds and yards, and not suffering those (particularly which 

 we intend to fatten) to rove about, consuming more food, and wasting away 

 more rapidly the various tissues of the body already formed, and making it 

 more expensive and difficult to fatten them. 



87. Fattening Cattle upon llayi — Speaking- upon this subject, a committee 

 of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, of which John Brooks and Paoli 

 Lathrop are members, remark : 



" Fattening cattle in winter upon hay alone is a resort of many farmers, 

 and where hay is plenty and distant from maiket, the practice is not incou- 



