142 FEEDING ANIMALS. 



animals. We have seen that it has 8. 6 of carbonaceous to 

 1 of nitrogenous food, while milk has only 3.37 of carbona- 

 ceous to 1 of nitrogenous. Corn is quite too heating and 

 fattening, and too poor in muscle-forming and bone-build- 

 ing food to be given alone to young animals in fact, it is 

 much better to discard it altogether in feeding animals 

 under six months old. 



Milk, the natural food of the young, has a large propor- 

 tion of oil, which prevents constipation and thus promotes 

 health, besides its most important office of lubricating 

 the joints, padding and cushioning the muscles. When 

 skimmed milk is substituted for full milk the animal is 

 soon found to suffer from constipation, and this is often 

 alternated with diarrhea. Here the skill of the feeder may 

 restore the cream, removed as a delicacy in human food, by 

 adding a cheaper oil to replace it in the skimmed milk. 

 Our table shows flax-seed to contain 37 per cent, of oil, and 

 this oil is found to be very digestible and agreeable to the 

 animal stomach. A little flax-seed boiled to a jelly and 

 stirred into this skimmed milk restores it so nearly to its 

 original condition, that calves thrive and fatten upon it 

 most satisfactorily. The oil in the flax-seed costs but a 

 small fraction of the value of the cream removed. This is 

 an example of the principle of mixing foods complemen- 

 tary to each other. Peas and beans are strong in albumi- 

 noids and bone-building elements, but deficient in oil, are 

 therefore constipating, and should have a little boiled flax- 

 seed mixed with the ground meal. Wheat middlings are 

 generally preferable to bran for the young, because contain- 

 ing less indigestible woody fibre, it is less irritating to the 

 stomach. The feeder should study the composition of 

 foods, and learn to combine those of different qualities, so 

 as to make a well-balanced ration. This skill enables him 

 to utilize everything grown upon the farm, and thus add to 

 his profits. 



