116 NUTRITIVE ELEMENTS OF FOOD. 



be taken with some qualifications The proportion is 

 probably not uniform as applied to all breeds indiscrim- 

 inately, though it may be more so as applied to animals 

 of the same breed. Bakewell's idea was that the quan- 

 tity of food required depended much on the shape of 

 the barrel ; and it is well known that an animal of a 

 close, compact, well-rounded barrel will consume lese 

 than one of an opposite make. 



The variations in the yield of milch cows are caused 

 more by the variations in the nutritive elements of their 

 food than by a change of the form in which it is given. 

 " A cow, kept through the winter on mere straw," says a 

 practical writer on this subject, " will cease to give 

 milk; and, when fed in spring on green forage, will give 

 a fair quantity of milk. But she owes the cessation 

 and restoration of the secretion to respectively the 

 diminution and the increase of her nourishment, and 

 not at all to the change of form, or of outward sub- 

 stance, in which the nourishment is administered. Let 

 cows receive through winter nearly as large a propor- 

 tion of nutritive matter as is contained in the clover, 

 lucerne, and fresh grasses, which they eat in summer, 

 and, no matter in what precise substance or mixture 

 that matter may be contained, they will yield a winter's 

 produce of milk quite as rich in caseine and butyr- 

 aceous ingredients as the summer's produce, and far 

 more ample in quantity than almost any dairyman with 

 old-fashioned notions would imagine to be possible. 

 The great practical error on this subject consists not 

 in giving wrong kinds of food, but in not so propor- 

 tioning and preparing it as to render an average ration 

 of it equally rich in the elements of nutrition, and es- 

 pecially in nitrogenous elements, as an average ration 

 of the green and succulent food of summer." 



We keep too much stock for the quantity of good 



