246 



Feeds and Feeding. 



nitrogen and ash, the latter containing the phosphoric acid and 

 potash, will be found in the excrements as is supplied in the food. 

 With fattening animals whose bodies are nearly or quite mature, but 

 little nitrogen and ash are retained by the body, while young, grow- 

 ing animals and those giving milk take large quantities of nitrogen 

 and ash from their food. These points are helpfully brought out in 

 the following table by Warington:^ 



Nitrogen and ash voided or secured as animal produce from food consumed. 



The horse at work renews its tissues as fast as they are worn out, 

 and so the intake and outgo of nitrogen and mineral matter are 

 equal. Having already built up its lean-meat tissues, the fattening 

 ox retains but 3.9 per ct. of the nitrogen supplied in the food, while 

 the dairy cow takes out of her feed 24.5 per ct., or about one-quar- 

 ter of the nitrogen it contains, using it in the production of the 

 casein and albumin of the milk. The young calf, w^hich is growing 

 rapidly in bone, muscle, and body organs, puts into its body over 

 two-thirds of all the nitrogen and over one-half of the mineral mat- 

 ter supplied in the food. Columns 3 and 4 of the table show that 

 about three-fourths of the nitrogen which is voided by farm animals 

 passes out in the urine. 



382. Amount of excrement voided. — Information on this subject 

 is limited and incomplete, but the following table arranged from all 

 available data may be held as representing averages: 



Chemistry of the Farm, p. 214. 



