﻿FISH-SCRAP FERTILIZER INDUSTRY OF ATLANTIC COAST. 37 



general. It is reported that in the Shetland Islands dry salt fish 

 constitute the main feed for cattle and sheep, and are even fed to 

 horses. 



The most rational method of utilizing fish for manure, and the one which it 

 seems to me must prove by far the most profitable way of economizing our 

 waste fish products, is by feeding them to stock. 1 



The following paragraphs are quoted from a paper by the eminent 

 nutrition expert and food chemist, the late W. O. Atwater, which 

 has been published as a part of the report by Goode: 



The earliest accounts which I have met of fish as food for domestic, aniihals 

 is the following extract from the Barnstable (Mass.) Journal of February 7, 

 1833: 



" The cattle at Provincetown feed upon fish with apparently as good relish 

 as upon the best kinds of fodder. It is said that some cows, kept there several 

 years, will, when grain and fish are placed before them at the same time, 

 prefer the latter, eating the whole of the fish before they touch the grain." 



In 1853, Mr. J. B. Lawes, of Rothamsted, England, reported several extensive 

 series of experiments " On the Feeding of Pigs," in which were tested the 

 effects of beans, lentil, Indian corn, and barley meals, bran, and dried New- 

 foundland codfish as foods for fattening. * * * In speaking of the series 

 in which the fish was fed with maize, barley, and bran in different proportions, 

 Mr. Lawes says : 



" In the series * * * where we have * * * a comparatively small 

 amount of nonnitrogenous matter consumed, the food consisted in a large pro- 

 portion of the highly nitrogenous codfish ; and in both of these cases, we had 

 not only a very good proportion of increase to food consumed, but the pigs in 

 these pens were very fat and well ripened. * * * This result is in itself 

 interesting, and it may perhaps point to a comparatively greater efficiency in 

 the already animalized protein compounds supplied in the codfish than in those 

 derived, as in the other cases, from the purely vegetable diets." 



The value of fish as food for domestic animals has been attested by experi- 

 enced and intelligent farmers in our own country. 



As early as 1S04, if not in fact previous to that date, the attention of mem- 

 bers of the board of agriculture (of Maine), and farmers generally was called 

 to the value of fish pomace or scrap as a feeding stuff for sheep, swine, and 

 poultry. In a communication to the board 2 Mr. William D. Dana, of Perry, 

 spoke in high tones of its value as a feed for domestic animals, in which he 

 said: 



" Fish pomace, or the residuum of herring after the oil is pressed out, is 

 greedily eaten by sheep, swine, and fowl; and probably pogy chum would be 

 eaten as well. Smoked alewives and frost fish also furnish a food palatable to 

 cattle. Sheep thrive well, get fat, and yield heavier fleeces when fed on this 

 pomace than when fed on anything else produced in this section of the State. 

 Careful and observing farmers, who have fed it, assert that it is of equal value 

 with good hay, ton per ton, and that its value for manure is in no degree di- 

 minished by passing it through the living mill, and thus reducing it to a much 

 more convenient state for applying. If it could be sufficiently dried, without 

 other substances, to prevent putrefaction, it would form a valuable article of 

 cattle feed in regions from which it is now excluded by the expense of trans- 

 portation and its own odoriferous nature." 



1 Goode, loc. cit. Cf. p. 248. 2 Agriculture of Maiue, 1864, p. 43. 



