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On increasing our Supplies of Animal Food. 



There is no truth more unwillingly learned by the amateur, or 

 yet more certainly forced on him in a few years, than the small 

 influence of maxima on agricultural averages ; so that the expe- 

 rienced farmer comes to look on all these reports of individual 

 cases with an indifference which might appear unreasonable. It 

 is a hard matter to say what is truth in so variable a matter as 

 feeding ; or where it is to be found, if not in the instances whose 

 details are recorded in our agricultural publications. But I 

 believe that average experience concurs in recommending a treat- 

 ment of fattening animals very much — if profit be our end — in 

 proportion to their quality. Well-bred stock may be forced from 

 calfhood forwards with the highest feeding from beginning to 

 end ; its precocity will take every advantage of every aid to deve- 

 lopment : but coarse unthrifty animals will pay for little beyond 

 a self-obtained livelihood from poor pasturage, where there is no 

 labour, little rent, and nothing bought to swell the debit side of 

 its account. And between these extremes of course every variety 

 of treatment may be demanded by varying circumstances. If 

 high feeding be adopted,, the object should be to give, in the 

 most digestible form — cut or crushed or even boiled, and inter- 

 mingled — food combining nourishment and cost in the most 

 economical proportion. Linseed, as a source of the fat, and 

 pease or bean meal, as a flesh-forming food, seem to offer the best 

 mixture. This, with Swedish turnips and mangold wurzel to fur- 

 nish water enough — not to speak of their own really nutritive 

 quality — and hay and straw chaff to give the bulk without which 

 the stomach cannot rightly perform its functions, and salt as a 

 wholesome condiment, will fatten an ox or a sheep as fast as 

 other circumstances permit. 



4. What these other circumstances are we must now consider. 

 They are all included in the words health, warmth, comfort. 



1 do not intend to discuss methods of restoring health when 

 it has once been disturbed. It is very seldom that a veterinary 

 surgeon can make much good of a fat patient. The best plan is 

 to kill such an animal on the first symptom of anything serious, 

 and sell the carcase. But it is with comfort and warmth as the 

 preventives of illness that we have to do. I shall not quote at 

 any length the explanations of the chemist on the advantages of 

 warmth. No one doubts these advantages. The fact is, that the 

 quantity of food which is consumed — i. e. burned — in the body 

 for the maintenance of its heat depends on the weight of the air 

 drawn into the lungs. If an animal be artificially warmed it 

 neither will nor can inspire so much as if it were cold. There 

 is not so much loss of heat to restore, and less fuel burned will 

 maintain it ; and the animal, not needing so much air to burn that 

 fuel, will not draw so much into its lungs. But it could not if it 



