Early Fattening and Breeding. 141 



On the contrary, a given quantity of food is digested 

 more completely and thoroughly, when it is digested slow- 

 ly, and more weight and growth of nutritive flesh is formed 

 from a given amount of food by slow feeding, than by 

 rapid cramming, or over-feeding. Hence there is a saving 

 of feed that is equivalent to profit, from slow or gradual 

 fattening for beef 



Yet the fact that fattening cattle gain in weight less rap- 

 idly during the third than the second year, and during 

 the fourth than the third year, when slowly fed until four 

 years old, has been made a plea for fattening at an early 

 age. But, as shrewd feeders have told us, and we have ob- 

 served for over forty years, much less feed is required, ini 

 the same length of time, to finish off cattle that are already' 

 half fattened, than is required to make them half fat. 



The interstices where fat is usually first stored, are al- 

 ready filled with fat, before much is stored or shows itself 

 immediately under the skin ; while the muscles are already 

 considerably reduced in cattle that have been confined 

 some time, there being also a reduction in the quantity of 

 blood, and rate of assimilation. 



The appetite becomes cloyed and reduced, the demand 

 for food and the cost of feeding being less, while the 

 quality of flesh that is only slowly formed is clear-grained, 

 sounder, and more nutritive. In fact, slow fattening pre- 

 vents waste of nutriment in the droppings ; the notion that 

 inactive cattle have digestive power according to any quan- 

 tity of food supplied, being "an illusion, " for the process 

 of maturing growth in cattle can be only half perfortned'wi. 

 half titne. 



The inferior quality of swill-fed pork is a familiar in- 

 stance of poor meat quality from over-rapid feeding. The 

 quality of the fat in swill-fed pork is so soft and unstable, 

 that much of it "boils away " in cooking; the heat of the 

 water melting the soft fat-cells into a poor quality of oil. 



