162 - INDIAN CORN CULTURE. 



ton seed. Those foods which contain a large 

 per cent of carbohydrates and fat are usually 

 termed carbonaceous. 



Nutritive ratio. — Foods contain these three 

 groups in different proportions. What we know 

 as a rich feeding stuff, as oil-meal, for example, 

 contains a much larger percentage of protein 

 than is possessed by the average food. An an- 

 imal cannot eat so much of it as where it is 

 specially abundant in carbohydrates, and not 

 in protein. The relationship existing between 

 the protein on one side and the carbohydrates 

 and fat on the other, is termed the nutritive 

 ratio, meaning one part protein to so many 

 of the other two combined. Where the ratio 

 of a food is 1 :2 it may be termed a narrow nu- 

 tritive ratio, while if it is 1:12 it is a wide one. 

 A food having a ratio of 1 :6 would be well bal- 

 anced, perhaps, but if it was an extreme on 

 either side of this it might be ill balanced. 



Pee'ding standards. — Many feeding experi- 

 ments, made both in Europe and the United 

 States, have shown that animals require prac- 

 tically certain amounts of each one of these 

 classes of foods to maintain the body or to pro- 

 duce growth. Wolff, a German, after much 

 experimentation, published a table of feeding 

 standards. This table gives the number of 

 pounds of dry matter (food without moisture), 

 protein, carbohydrates, and fat required by the 



