Oil-bearing Seeds and their By-products. 153 



Cotton-seed meal is particularly fatal to swine. Pigs getting as 

 much as one-third of their concentrates in the form of cotton-seed 

 meal thrive at first, but after 5 or 6 weeks, or sometimes earlier, 

 they quite frequently show derangement and may die. Restricting 

 the allowance of meal, keeping the animals on pasture, supplying 

 succulent feeds, or souring the feed may help, but no uniformly 

 successful method of feeding cotton-seed meal to swine has yet been 

 found. 



Numerous efforts have been made during the past 20 j'ears to de- 

 termine the cause of the poisonous action of cotton-seed meal. The 

 harmful eff'ects have been variously ascribed to the lint, the oil, the 

 high protein content, to a toxal albumin or toxic alkaloid, to cholin 

 and betain, to resin present in the meal, and to decomposition prod- 

 ucts. Recent investigations by Mohler and Crawford of the Bureau 

 of Animal Industry, United States Department of Agriculture,^ 

 appear to prove conclusively that the chief poisonous principle in 

 certain cotton-seed meals is a salt of pyrophosphoric acid. It was 

 found that, while the seed from Upland cotton proved quite gen- 

 erally poisonous to animals, that from certain Sea Island cotton 

 contained so small a quantity of the poisonous principle as to be 

 practically harmless. The poisonous effect of Sea Island seed, how- 

 ever, was greatly increased by heating, indicating that if in the 

 treatment of the seed at the oil mills the temperature rises high the 

 poisonous principle is developed. Aside from avoiding too high 

 heating of the crushed kernels in the manufacture of oil, no remedy 

 for the poison has yet been suggested. Now that science has located 

 the source of the trouble, it is reasonable to hope that a favorable 

 solution of this most important matter will soon be reached. 



195. Rational use of cotton seed and by-products. — Cotton seed 

 and cotton-seed meal are among the richest and heaviest of feeds. 

 When fed in limited quantity with a proper complement of other 

 feeding stuff's, exceedingly satisfactory results can be secured with 

 dairy cows and fattening cattle. Wet, moldy cotton seed, or that 

 which has heated, should never be fed. Good cotton-seed meal has 

 a bright yellow color and a pleasant taste. Meal of a dull color 

 from exposure to the air, and that from musty or fermented seed, 

 should not be used. Cotton-seed meal is not so well suited to the 

 animal economy as linseed meal, yet it is so highly nutritious and so 

 generally useful with cattle that it is of vast importance to the 



^Expt. Sta. Eec, 22, 1910, pp. 501-505; Jour. Pharmacol, and Expt. Ther., 1, 

 1910, No. 5, pp. 519-548. 



