ANIMAL HUSBANDRY. 99 



CHAPTER VI. 



ANIMAL HUSBANDRY. 



Although this country has achieved fame for the excellence 

 of its cattle and sheep and the rapidity with which they are 

 fattened, and has come to be regarded as the most important 

 " stud farm " of the world, it cannot be said that our methods of 

 feeding are economical, or that our present output of meat 

 is entirely satisfactory. When allowance is made for imported 

 feeding stuffs it may be estimated that the cultivated land 

 {arable and grass) of the United Kingdom produces about 800,000 

 tons of beef and mutton per annum ; further, that some 17,000,000 

 acres of pastures and meadows are used for this purpose, so that 

 the output of beef and mutton from these principal sources of 

 supply is considerably less than i cwt. per acre per annum. 

 Moreover, imported feeding stuffs are costly; in 1919 the imports 

 amounted to nearly ;{6o,ooo,ooo. There is thus ample room for 

 improvement in methods of feeding and management, not only 

 in order to secure a greater yield of meat, but also to reduce the 

 present heavy expenditure on feeding stuffs imported into the 

 country. Research into this subject is carried out in England 

 at the Animal Nutrition Institute attached to the University 

 of Cambridge. In Scotland such problems are dealt with at 

 the Rowett Research Institute attached to the University of 

 Aberdeen with the aid of funds provided by the Board of Agri- 

 culture for Scotland, through whose courtesy we are able to 

 include an account of the work in this chapter. 



Protein. 

 The investigation of problems concerning nutrition has resulted 

 in discoveries of far-reaching importance during the last 20 or 

 30 years, and it is clear that our knowledge of the science of 

 nutrition is far from complete. For example, at the present time 

 a farmer buys a feeding stuff largely on an analysis which divides 

 the constituents of the food into groups of substances — albu- 

 minoids {i.e., protein), fats, &c., according to certain chemical 

 reactions. A knowledge of the percentage of each of these groups 

 present is valuable as a rough basis of comparison between it 

 and other food stuffs ; but the method takes no account of certain 

 vital facts regarding foods which nutritional research has brought 

 to light. From the point of view of the farmer, the most im- 

 portant of these discoveries concerns the nitrogenous part of the 



