338 FEEDING ANIMALS. 



THE Cow AS, A FOOD PRODUCER. 



The large eating capacity of a good dairy cow is proverb- 

 ial ; which will be easily understood if we make a cursory 

 examination of her production. Suppose a cow weigh- 

 ing 900 Ibs. yields 6,000 Ibs. of milk in nine or ten months. 

 This milk would contain 780 Ibs. of dry matter, counting it 

 87 per cent, water. Here she yields 6% times her own 

 weight in milk, and the dry substance in the milk is twice 

 that in her own body. The cow is the most remarkable 

 food producer among animals. She produces twice as 

 much food in her milk as does the beef animal of the same 

 weight in its gain in flesh, during the same time. It seems 

 that this remarkable economy of production in the cow 

 was observed and discussed by Payen, in 1843, whilst asso- 

 ciated with Dumas and Boussingault, in "Kesearches on 

 the Fattening of Cattle and the Formation of Milk." 

 These observations were published in Les Comptes Rendus, 

 Feb. 13, 1843. After giving experiments he says: 



" The cow which has consumed 10 kilogrammes (22 Ibs.) 

 of hay above the ration of support, yields 10 litres (22.6 

 Ibs.) of milk, which represents one kilogramme 400 

 grammes of solid matter ; while the ox has increased only 

 one kilogramme with the same food, and of this the water 

 absorbed into the tissues of the animal ought certainly to 

 be counted as the half. * * * A milch cow, then, 

 draws to the profit of man, from the same pasture, a quan- 

 tity of matter for the food of man which may be more 

 than double that extracted from it by a fattening ox. 

 * * * There exists the most perfect analogy between 

 the production of milk and the fattening of animals, as 

 the rearers of stock had anticipated. But, nevertheless, 

 the fattening ox turns to use less of the fatty matter, or 

 azotized substances, than the milch cow. And this last 

 merits, in an economical point of view, the preference, 



