I08 AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH AND THE FARMER : 



can be supplied by adding a very small quantity of green food 

 to the ration. The trials were preceded by some preliminary 

 experiments with rats from which it was discovered that these 

 animals thrive on barley meal, but die if fed on rye meal alone. 

 The experiments were therefore repeated with pigs. The rye-fed 

 pigs ate their moss litter in order to get the vitamins necessary 

 to keep them alive. The pigs were then put on wooden floors, 

 and so isolated from any vitamin-containing material. They 

 were fed with rye-meal and palm kernel cake, neither of which 

 contains vitamins, and vitamins were supplied by means pi a 

 trace of linseed and a very small quantity of green stuff. On 

 these rations the pigs made such progress that at six months old 

 {i.e,. in July, 192 1) they won a prize in the bacon pig competition 

 at the Cambridgeshire show. 



A large-scale feeding experiment which is valuable not only 

 for its practical bearing on the causes of a prevalent disease of 

 pigs but also for the light that it throws on a certain aspect of 

 vitamin research, has recently been concluded at the Aberdeen 

 Institute. The experiment was spread over a period of 18 

 months, and upwards of 100 pigs, varying from 7 weeks to 

 6 months old, were employed. Primarily the trials were intended 

 to determine the causes and methods of prevention of a nutri- 

 tional disease which is very prevalent in the case of pigs kept in 

 confinement. The most obvious symptoms are loss of appetite, 

 lethargy, stiff stilted gait affecting the hind quarters, and later 

 loss of power of the legs. In severe cases, deformities of the long 

 bones and fractures of the ribs occur. In certain districts it has 

 been estimated that about 50 per cent, of the animals bom in 

 the Autumn or in the early part of the breeding season suffer 

 from this disease in one form or another, and it affects not only 

 flesh production at the time, but the health of the animal after- 

 wards. The disease is generally known as " rickets," but it is 

 not certain whether it is identical with the true rickets affecting 

 children. Interesting as the Aberdeen experiments are, they 

 can only be summarised very briefly here. There were two series 

 of experiments, the first of which dealt with the part played by 

 vitamins in connection with the disease, and while these showed 

 that a deficiency in vitamins was certainly not the chief factor 

 in producing the disease, it was ascertained that the rate of 

 growth, and thus the production of pork for a given amount of 

 food, was dependent upon whether on not certain of these vita- 

 mins were present. From the point of view of prevention of the 

 disease, however, the most useful results were obtained from 

 the second series of experiments, which dealt with the question 

 of the influence of mineral matter in the food. The foods com- 



