48 Milk and Its Products 



A great deal has been said arid written about the 

 amount of food that should be given to a cow in 

 milk, and various standards have been established. 

 These standards are useful to guide the inexperienced 

 feeder, the chief difficulty concerning them being 

 that one is likely to get the idea that if the standard 

 is scientifically established on a proper basis all that 

 is necessary to do is to administer the standard 

 amount of food to the animal, and a given result will 

 be obtained. Such is not the case. Animals vary in 

 the amount of food that they are able to use, and 

 more particularly in the amount that they can eco- 

 nomically turn into product. In respect to the dairy 

 cow, three things will happen if she is fed continu- 

 ously all the food that she will eat regularly without 

 disarranging the digestive organs or going "off feed:" 

 (1) She will secrete a certain amount of product 

 (milk and milk fat), and at the same time gain in 

 weight, or will put fat on her body. (2) She will 

 make a similar amount of product, but will make no 

 gain in weight, some of the food apparently going to 

 waste. (3) She will ufee all of the food consumed 

 for the production of milk, and will increase regularly 

 in milk secretion as the food is increased up to the 

 limit of her capacity to eat and digest. It is needless 

 to say that the cows in this latter class are the most 

 valuable to their owners, and experience has deter- 

 mined that they are more numerous than was formerly 

 supposed. 



The ideal ration. A liberal and economical ration 

 for the best type of dairy cow is all the roughage 



