1847. 



GENESEE FARMER. 



35 



what is the inference ? Can we escape the con- 

 clusion that this insoluble compound so useful to 

 make cream, and evolve heat to warm the ani- 

 mal, has slipped through the digestive organs 

 unchanged ? One remedy is, to cook the food, 

 and thus transform an insoluble starch into a so- 

 luble gum. 



But there is another, and perhaps, all things 

 considered, a better remedy. It has been found 

 by careful experiments and analyses that the 

 ground seeds of plants, like corn, oat and bar- 

 ley meal, wet with cold water or fed dry to 

 cows, steers and other rununant animals, with- 

 out hay or straw, passes like the chewed cud di- 

 rectly into the last stomach, and thus loses the 

 whole benefit of the second mastication. Hence 

 follows the important result that this food, so tru- 

 ly valuable in itself, is only half digested. Feed 

 your cattle on whole ears of corn, and your 

 store pigs will find whole kernels of this grain 

 in their dung. Nor will grinding alone answer 

 the best purpose. The meal should be intimate- 

 ly mixed with cut hay, straw or corn-stalks, 

 that it may pass into the ventriculum or first 

 stomach, go back into the mouth, |be thoroughly 

 incorporated with the saliva, and masticated as a 

 cud in the second chewing. It is difficult to ex- 

 tract all the nutritive elements from corn meal 

 without cooking. The small sand like particles 

 of the grain are extremely hard, and so abound 

 in oil, as to resist the solvent powers of the gas- 

 tric juices of herbivorous animals. 



The loss by defective digestion in only one 

 item, and perhaps the smallest, that occurs in 

 feeding domestic animals. Let us suppose that 

 a cow or a horse needs the daily addition of ten 

 pounds of new blood drawn from digested food, 

 to maintain a constant heat of 98 degrees in a 

 mass of flesh that will weigh 900 lbs, and repair 

 the waste in the same. It may not be far from 

 the truth to say that eight pounds of the matter 

 furnished by the ten pounds of blood must be 

 burnt to keep the body warm. The carbon and 

 hydrogen daily expelled from the lungs of a cow 

 or horse in the form of carbonic acid gas and 

 vapor are more than equal to all the carbon and 

 hydrogen contained in eight pounds of dry 

 starch, sugar or oil. The other two pounds 

 njust furnish each muscle with new fibrin, and 

 the brain, nerves, bones, liver, lungs, and all 

 other organs with new elements of precisely the 

 right character and condition, to suit the peculi- 

 ar wants of each living tissue. It is not merely 

 theory but fact, that both the food and blood of 

 animals often contain either an excess of com- 

 bustible elements for warming the system, or a 

 deficiency of the same. In either case a loss is 

 inevitable ; but it is greater in case there is too 

 little, rather than too much fuel. Nature has 

 provided adipose tissues for storing up fat or fu- 

 el when there is an excess in the blood, to be 

 used in time of need. But no such provision is 



made for laying up a surplus of the ingredients 

 that make muscular fibre, nerves, brain and bone. 

 Hence, any excess there may be, in the food of 

 any animal, must escape from the system either 

 by the bowels, or as urea or other compound in 

 the excretions by the kidneys, by insensible per- 

 spiration, or as gas and vapor through the lungs> 

 It has been found 'hat to increase the oil, starch,, 

 or saccharine matter in the food of a cow giving' 

 milk, with a view to augment the yield of butter, 

 while the supply of tissue-forming or brain- form- 

 ing elements was neglected, results in a loss in- 

 stead of a gain in butter. To fatten an animal, 

 it must have not only an excess beyond daily con- 

 sumption of the elements that make fat, but en- 

 joy a fair supply of all the other ingredients re- 

 quired to form its lean meat, bones, &c. 



It is practicable by good and skilful keep, to 

 augment the daily secretion of milk, and its rich- 

 ness in butter and cheese. To attain this result, 

 the comfort and health of cows must be studied, 

 and lie at the foundation of the improvement — 

 Their food in winter should be cooked, so far as 

 roots, tubers, and grain are used in feeding them. 

 They should be well bedded, watered and salted, 

 as well as fed with a variety of suitable nourish- 

 ment. The importance of variety in the food 

 of herbivorous animals is too much overlooked 

 by mo.st agriculturists. Remember this unvary- 

 ing law : Every part of the system must be sup- 

 plied with its appropriate elements in an availa- 

 ble form ; and every excess of any element be- 

 yond the requirements of nature is so much loss 

 to the owner of the stock. We must resume the 

 investigation of this interesting subject, and en- 

 deavor to point out to practical farmers the com- 

 position of various plants, and their true value 

 in forming fat, lean meat, bone, brain, wool, 

 cheese, and other animal products. We know 

 that we tread on slippery ground ; for it is now 

 six years since our study and remarks on vege- 

 -able and animal physiology subjected us to pub- 

 lic ridicule by grave Senators in their places at 

 the Capitol of the State. Many of our readers 

 doubtless now believe that it is all humbug to 

 think of adapting food to the natural require- 

 ments of the muscles, bones, brain and nerves 

 of their domestic animals. They know that all 

 animals eat food and make blood, but that the 

 quality of the latter depends on the composition 

 of the former they utterly discredit. All the 

 consolation that we have is, that the next gener- 

 ation will think better of men that give theii* 

 time and money to investigations of this character. 



Charcoal. — Mr. Alex. Coffin says, in the 

 Cultivator, that he put about a peck of charcoal 

 around each of three peach trees in the spring of 

 1844, which greatly improved the bearing of the 

 trees as well as the quality of the fruit. Those 

 around which no charcoal was placed bore no 

 good fruit in the years 1845 and '6, and if noth- 

 ing be done to prevent it, will soon die. 



