12 FEEDING WITH SUGAR BEETS, SUGAR, ETC. 



.proportional to that furnished by the fodder. An excess of 

 carbohydrates brings about an unnecessary decomposition of 

 protein and fat. Serious complications may arise, and the 

 droppings under these circumstances contain the portions that 

 have not been assimilated. 



Theoretical con- Most of the early experiments having in view the production 

 siderations re- of flesh were made upon dogs. A complete account of same 

 specting flesh wou i(j be beyond the scope of this writing: however, the con- 

 elusions arrived at are, in some respects, very much the same as 

 they would have been upon ruminating animals, the assimila- 

 tion or re-absorption being almost identical in the two cases. 

 Wolff says that experiments show that a dog can eat 15 grams 

 of starch per kilogram of live weight; a milch cow or oxen well 

 fed will extract from fodder about the same amount of carbo- 

 hydrates per diem and per unit of weight, though the same may 

 be^said of protein, but not of fat, which ruminating animals do 

 not digest as readily as carnivora. Let the animal be what it 

 may, it becomes carnivorous when starved, in the sense that it 

 consumes its own flesh. When the ration has been properly 

 combined, the amount of protein decomposed from the body per 

 diem and per kilogram of live weight is 1,8 grams for milch 

 cows, 1.2 for sheep and only 0.75 for a stall-fed ox. When the 

 ration is very rich, these figures are more than doubled, as the 

 case may be. The protein consumed during fasting is by 

 no means a sure basis for determining the amount needed 

 to sustain life in a normal condition of health. The protein 

 needed for such a purpose is several times more than the exper- 

 iments indicate, for if an animal receives more albumin than it 

 actually requires, an equilibrium is after a reasonable interval 

 established, which, in other words, means that in the urine, 

 etc., there is found eliminated an amount of nitrogen exactly 

 equal to the surplus furnished in the fodder, the rapidity of the 

 establishment of this equilibrium depending upon the amount 

 of protein furnished. The conditions must necessarily vary for 

 each case. As to the pros and cons of feeding too much protein, 

 much might be written. There is ample evidence to show that 

 an excess of albumin is better than a deficiency, as the waste, if 

 there be any, is compensated for. Numerous experiments show 



