154 Cattle Problems. 



Their natural degree of activity has been reduced more 

 than 70 per cent, and their extent of breathing has prob- 

 ably been reduced to the extent of 40 per cent below the 

 natural extent that hogs engaged in daily out-door graz- 

 ing, breathe during their natural exercise. 



It is this reduction in the natural and healthy extent of 

 daily exercise, and the corresponding reduction in the 

 healthy extent of breathing, that constitutes the unfavor- 

 ably changed conditions of very many inactive cows — in- 

 cluding some other cattle, in both Europe and this coun- 

 try ; and in millions of over-fat and under-exercised hogs, 

 in considerable parts of the United States. 



The reduction of exercise and breathing in these cows is 

 probably 33 per cent of the natural quantity of oxygen, 

 which full breathing supplies to complete the red blood 

 corpuscles. And, as breathing is a dual and reciprocat- 

 ing process, the extent of exhalatory breathing by the 

 lungs — whose function it is to carry excretory poisons 

 from the blood — is reduced some 33 per cent below the 

 natural and healthy extent of excretory breathing. 



Cattle and hogs naturally require considerable rest, du- 

 ring which rumination and sleep take place. The repose 

 occurs principally in the night time ; but whenever it oc- 

 curs the rate of circulation and nutrition are retarded, by 

 diminished muscular motion, and reduced breathing ; the 

 rate of exhalation by the lungs being similarly reduced. 

 During a condition of repose, the poison, carbonic acid, is 

 constantly passing from the tissues into the venous blood 

 in cattle and swine ; so that an accumulation of this poison 

 in the blood during long periods of repose, takes place. 

 Both during repose and activity, this discharge of poison 

 into the venous blood goes on from the muscles, and other 

 tissues. The discharge of carbonic acid poison from the 

 muscles is increasing, and extensive, and the amount of 

 this poison formed in the system during repose, probably 



