76 THE FARMERS HANDBOOK. 



The importance of milk a* pirt of the ration, particularly for y< ung stock 

 and for animals suffering from disease due to diet-deficiency, has been studied 



by F. E. Place, of Etoseworthy College, South Australia. He urges* that it 

 is most profitable to keep young stock thriving, and that milk is an essential 

 for them : that stoppage of growth may be rectified by the addition of milk 

 to the diet, and that the stinting of milk in early life results in increased 

 susceptibility to diet-deficiency diseases later on. Properly pasteurised milk 

 is efficient. White-eye or opacity of the cornea in calves and young sheep is 

 a symptom of vitamine deficiency, and disappears if milk is fed in the case of 

 calves or fresh pasture in the case of sheep. In the case of diseases the 

 dosage of milk may he lar^e. Whole milk is rich in vitamine A fairly rich 

 in B^and contains C in variable quantities. Skimmed milk has lost some of 

 its vitamine A. 



It has already been mentioned that storing and heating are inimical to the 

 vitamine content, and it may generally be said that fresh fodder, such as the 

 grasses and particularly leafy vegetables (see tables on pages 774-5) are 

 specially rich in the Fat-soluble A type — more so than roots and tubers. Such 

 foods are richest in this vitamine at an early stage of growth, as, for example, 

 lucerne and carrots; bright green lucerne, properly cured, is a superior 

 food, owing to its vitamine content, to light, bleached lucerne. 



On germination, seeds have a higher content of both the anti-scorbutic and 

 the anti-neuritic type. The nutritive value of eggs may be increased by 

 feeding sprouted grain to poultry, especially in the winter. 



The seasons and the climatic conditions also affect the vitamine content of 

 fodder. In periods of drought the grasses are deficient in vit amines, a 

 deficiency which is reflected in the milk. 



If dairy-cattle are fed on s-tover without any grain, the milk produced will 

 be deficient in these substances. 



In the feeding of dairy-cattle the presence of vitamines in the ration is of 

 great importance, much more so than in the case of beef-cattle. Milk, as 

 stated above, is rich in vitamine A, fairly rich in B, and contains C in variable 

 quantities. Meat (muscle), on the other hand, contains only small quantities 

 of vitamine A, whilst the presence of B and is somewhat doubtful The 

 vitamines present in the foods fed to cattle are stored only to a limited 

 extent in the meat, but abundantly in the milk, t 



Of the ordinary stock foods, the valuable oil cakes, coco-nut cake and 

 cotton-seed cake have been investigated for their vitamine-content. Thty 

 are fairly rich in B, contain A, but no C The oils themselves, such as coco- 

 nut oil, linseed oil, and cotton-seed oil, contain none. The only oils and fats 

 containing vitamines in any quantity are such as are not fed to stock, such 

 as cod-liver oil and butter (which are rich in Fat-soluble A) and whale-oil, 

 some animal fats, orange-peel od, and a few others, in which A is present, 

 though not so abundantly. Similarly, sugar and starch contain no vitamines, 

 so that the high feeding value of rations rich in fats or oils and carbohydrates 

 is due solely to their calorific v^lue. Lucerne is rich in vitamines A and B, 

 fresh lucerne being as rich in this vitamine as in butter, and when fed to 

 dairy cattle increase the proportion of these vitamines in the butter 

 produced. 



Of seeds and grain used in stock and poult ry feeding, maize (both yellow 

 and white) is fairly rich in B, yellow maize containing in addition vitamine A. 



*A paper read before the Australian Association for the Advancement of Science, and published in the 



i iculture, South Australia, May, 1 921. 

 t "The Vitamines." H. C. Sherman and S. L. Smith. 



