156 THE DAIRYMAN^S MAKUAL. 



by disease, and substituting the butcher's knife for it; 

 but the dairyman cannot sacrilice his cows, except per- 

 haps an occasional victim to serve as a medium for a test 

 of ability to consume food and change it to butter in 

 excessive quantities. He must therefore watch, not only 

 the results, both ways, of feeding such rich substances as 

 oil meals, and as a safeguard he must know the character 

 of what he is feeding. These remarks refer chiefly to 

 cottonseed meal, which, from several writers' experience, 

 we have found to be well worth the closest scrutiny and 

 most careful use in respect to its effect upon tlie animal's 

 system. Its effect upon the butter is excellent, giving 

 good texture, fine color, sweet, nutty flavor, much like 

 its own, and great firmness, so much so as to render it 

 difficult to work up in the winter at less than seventy 

 degrees of temperature and to give it a desirable hard- 

 ness in the summer. Two pounds per day, however, we 

 believe is the extreme quantity that is safe to give a cow 

 whose proclivity for converting rich food into butter 

 makes her subject to attacks of garget by over-pressure 

 in this direction. As regards the effect of cotton-seed 

 meal upon the circulatory system of an animal it is only 

 necessary to refer to its composition. A. recent analysis 

 of the oil meal of the crop of 1886 — a very favorable year 

 ^ for quality — gives its composition as follows : 



Water -.-- 6.90 



Oil 15.13 



Albuminous compounds 42.40 (nitro2:en, 6.77) 



Gum, sugar, and digestible fiber 26.96 (carbo-hydrates) 



Indigestible fiber 2.53 



Ash 6.08 



Total - 100.00 



As the ash consists mostly of potash and phosphoric 

 acid, which are useful alimentary substances, it appears 

 that there is only two and one-luilf per cent of this food 

 that is indigestible. Hence it is almost as highly con- 



