Relative Food Cost of Animal Products 407 



no advantage over the pig except in kind of product. 

 Next in the order of economical use of food comes 

 the calf, when fed largely on milk. Poultry products 

 stand next in line. Sheep and lambs do not differ 

 materially from steers, meat products of these two 

 classes requiring the largest proportional food con- 

 sumption of any form of growth here considered. The 

 order of food efficiency as related to the several animal 

 products is therefore as follows : milk, pork, veal, 

 poultry and eggs, mutton and beef. The common 

 claims that the food cost of a pound of butter is no 

 greater than that of a pound of dressed carcass is 

 not borne out by these average figures. 



It is suggestive, at least, to notice that the food 

 factor is inversely as the labor factor in these various 

 lines of production. For instance, labor is a large 

 factor of the cost of a pound of any dairy product, 

 and a small factor in the cost of beef or mutton, while 

 the reverse is emphatically true of the food cost. 



