74 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



fat. I was attracted by it, and the next year I began to feed it. 

 I did not feed so largely as Mr. Smith docs — not more than two 

 quarts a day j and out of fifty cows I was obliged to get rid of 

 thirty in two years in consequence of inflammation of the udder. 

 I found they were losing their capacity to give milk. And of 

 the remaining cows — many of which were pure bred Ayrshire 

 cows, which I did not desire to sell at any rate — were injured, 

 and it took me three years to bring them back to their former 

 condition. That was one experiment. It was manifest that the 

 cotton-seed meal produced that effect. Year before last I pur- 

 chased in Vermont, in the fall, some cows, intending to feed 

 them in the fall and winter and turn them in the spring. 

 They had just calved. I gave those cows five quarts of cotton- 

 seed meal for the purpose of keeping up a great flow of milk 

 and getting them in good condition for the butcher. Of that 

 lot of cows I retained two, they were so remarkably good. 

 They gave, at the time I wasfeedingthem, just after I purchased 

 them, from sixteen to eighteen quarts of milk a day. I kept 

 them through the next season, turned them out to grass ; they 

 calved again, but they never gave over six quarts of milk, and 

 I never got them into condition again. It seemed as if they had 

 been poisoned, or there was something the matter Avitli their 

 digestive organs which had been injured by the cotton-seed meal. 

 That was another experiment. 



Now Mr. Smith says cotton-seed meal is cheap in the market. 

 What is the reason ? The English feeders are purchasing what 

 they call oil cake at double the price of cotton-seed meal — and 

 why ? Because their experience has shown them that cotton- 

 seed meal is injurious. It is not a week since I met one of the 

 most intelligent English feeders, a young farmer from Somerset- 

 shire, who is engaged in breeding Herefords, and whose father 

 is engaged in fatting Devons, and he gave me an exceedingly 

 interesting account of these two classes of animals. He said he 

 was making meat for the market. I asked him, " Do you feed 

 cotton-seed meal ? " " No, I don't." "Why?" "Because 

 half a dozen animals on our two farms have died from that 

 cause. The veterinary surgeon found that it had injured them 

 in such a way as to be destructive of their life. It threw them 

 off their appetite, made them dyspeptic, created accumulations 

 of bard, faecal matter ia the intestines, and the animal died." 



