128 BOARD OB^ AGRICULTURE. 



The Chairman. As Professor Goessmann is not here, I 

 will, before calling for the next paper, simply inquire if there 

 is any desire on the part of any person here to have any dis- 

 cussion on this subject, or if any one has any questions to 

 propose to any of our learned chemists, of whom we have 

 two or three here present? We have Mr. Chadbourne, Mr. 

 Stockbridge, and some others. 



J. Lyman Shepard. There is one fact to be considered 

 in connection with this subject, and that is, that the same 

 ration does not produce the same effect on one cow that it 

 does on another any more than the same food produces the 

 same effect on two persons. One person will digest one 

 kind of food and another person another, so I find myself in 

 a fog on this matter, unless I take my experience as a guide. 

 I have eight cows that I am feeding, and if I feed the same 

 amount and the same kind of food to each cow, I find one cow 

 falls away and another one increases her milk. I find, also, 

 in feeding^different kinds of fodder — corn-meal, clover hay,, 

 meadow hay, wheat-straw — that some cows respond at once 

 to one kind of food and other cows to another, so that I do 

 not think there can be any rule laid down which will always 

 answer. I think a person who would feed judiciously and 

 intelligently has got to study the nature of the animal which 

 he is feeding, and adapt the food to the particular cow or 

 other animal that he is feeding ; for instance, I feed some 

 days wheat-straw, which will increase the amount of milk 

 from some of my cows one, two, or three quarts a day; 

 another one will increase her flow of milk if fed a ration of 

 oat-straw, with the oats in connection with it, as they grow 

 in the field ; others increase their quantity of milk more 

 largely on clover hay. I should like to get all the informa- 

 tion I can on this subject. If there is anybody present who 

 has been experimenting in the same direction, I should like 

 to hear the result of his experiments. 



Mr. A. W. Brown. I am very much interested in this 

 question. I want^to get some practical ideas on questions 

 like these : How much butter and how much beef will a hun- 

 dred weight of meal make, a hundred weight of oats, or any 

 other feed ? What we want to get at is the value of a cer- 

 tain quantity of food for the production of milk, butter, and 



