FIRST CENTURY OF DAIRYING IN NEW SOUTH WALES. 



milk cannot be obtained from average hay alone. To secure the full 

 value of such hay we must combine with it other substances rich in 

 nitrogen, such as bean or maize meal, especially in the absence of 

 clover, which only grows -for a few months in the year. 



In feeding stock, however, a farmer may take hay, straw, grain, 

 roots, and oil cake, and mix them all together with a view of forming 

 bone, muscle, fat, and milk in each animal according to the quantity 

 consumed. A portion of the food is digestible, nutritious, and useful 

 for these purposes only, as a part of the food is not nutritive, as the 

 animal cannot digest it, and is voided in excrement, and i ; useful only 

 as manure. It is therefore important to know how much of a grven 

 fodder is digestible, and so portion it out that the be>t use sha.l be 

 made of the nutritive part. It will be easily seen that unless much 

 care is paid to these 'points much valuable food is wasted. The ques- 

 tion at once arises : How much of the ingredients of different foods 

 will dairy heifers and cows digest when rightly fed ? 



During the past ten years many scores of feeding tria s have been 

 made to ascertain the exact quantities without much definite result, 

 as the periods have only been for months, whereas they should extend 

 over the whole lifetime of the animals for several generations. It is 

 found that unless the ingredients are mixed in proper proportions only 

 a part of the digestible material will be actually digested, while the 

 rest is wasted. By such investigations we learn also which of the 

 food ingredients such as starch, albuminoids, &c. are made over 

 into fat, or into muscles or lean meat in the body ; also which ones 

 supply the 'fat of butter and casein of curd ; which ones are consumed 

 in producing the heat which keeps the animal warm ; and which ones 

 are used yielding muscular force to the body. In short, these in- 

 vestigations only show the nutritive value of different foods, which 

 can be learned from the chemical analysis of the different fodder 

 plants and the calculations of what proportions they should be mixed 

 and led out to animals according to age and weight, and this is all 

 expressed so plainly that a farmer can understand it without any spe- 

 cial scientific knowledge. 



But ask any practical farmer what he thinks of those tables, and his 

 reply will be, " Although they are aids to mixing fodder, they must 

 not be followed blindly. We need more system in feeding our cattle ; 

 more definite knowledge of what to grow for mixing our cattle -foods; 

 more applied science in raising fodder ; more cheap money to invest 

 in the cattle industry ; more great minds in our Legislature to carry 

 out gigantic schemes of water conservation. Without great supplies 

 of water science cannot prevail." 



Good grass from well-cultivated pasture gives all the food a cow 

 yielding milk requires. This statement cannot be overstated nor over- 

 estimated, as it is the basis of all our practical knowledge in stock 

 raising. But there are times when grasses lose their best nutritive 

 qualities ; then either stall -feeding, yard feeding, or paddock feeding 

 is necessary. This latter system is generally termed hand feeding. 

 '1 lie question has over and over been asked, how much fodder can a 

 cow. presuming she is allowed out on pasture, consume profitably 

 each day of her existence ? This has been answered approximately in 

 several parts of this work. The value of a food depends on its diges- 

 tibility. Some foods are easily digested, other loods must be given in 

 combination, otherwise' the cow's stomach cannot assimilate them pro- 

 perly. Cows are ruminant s-- -they chew the cud. When the foe* 1 i- 

 iir-t -wallowed it goes into the rumen or first stomach, from which 

 it come-> back again at sonic ,-uitablc time to the mouth for further 

 ma-tii-ation, after which it is finally swallowed, an 1 passe on to the 

 third and fourth stomachs. The capacity of the stomach in cattle is 

 enormous, amounting to from 50 to 60 gallons. It fills the greater 

 part of the abdominal cavity, and the paunch alone oceupies nine 

 tenth- of the entire \nlunie of the stomach, the remaining three divi- 



240, 



