FEEDING AND MANAGEMENT OF DAIRY COWS. 
355 
in the management of my cows was great, the result was 
still more striking. The quantity of milk kept increasing, 
and it reached the highest point when the cows attained the 
condition of the fat kine of Pharaoh’s dream. The quantity 
of milk became double, triple, and even quadruple what it 
had been before; so that if I should compare the product 
with that previously attained, a hundred pounds of hay 
produced three times more milk than it had produced with 
my old mode of feeding. Such results, of course, attracted 
my attention to this branch of farming. It became a matter 
of pleasure, and my observations were followed up with 
great care, and during several years I devoted a large part of 
my time to it. I even went so far as to procure scales for 
weighing the food and the animals, in order to establish 
exact data on the most positive basis.” 
The conclusions to which he arrived were, that an animal, 
to be fully fed and satisfied, requires a quantity of food in 
proportion to its live weight; that no food could be complete 
that did not contain a sufficient amount of nutritive elements; 
hay, for example, being more nutritive than straw, and grains 
than roots. He found, too, that the food must possess a 
bulk sufficient to fill, to a certain degree, the organs of 
digestion; and that to receive the full benefit of its food, 
the animal must be wholly satisfied. If the stomach is not 
sufficiently distended, the food cannot be properly digested, 
and of course many of the nutritive principles it contains 
are not perfectly assimilated. An animal regularly fed eats 
till it is satisfied, and no more than is requisite. A part of 
the nutritive elements in hay and other forage plants, is 
needed to keep an animal up ; and if the nutrition of its 
food is not sufficient for this, the weight decreases, and if it 
is more than sufficient the weight increases, or else this 
excess is consumed in the production of milk or in labour. 
About one sixtieth of their live weight in hay or its equivalent 
will keep horned cattle up; but in order to be completely 
nourished, they require about one thirtieth in dry substances, 
and four thirtieths in w-ater, or other liquid, contained in 
their food. The excess of nutritive food over and above 
what is required to sustain life will go in milch cows 
generally to the production of milk, or to the growth of the 
foetus, but not in all cows to an equal extent, the tendency to 
the secretion of milk being far more developed in some than 
in others. 
With regard to the consumption of food in proportion to 
the live weight of the animal, however far it may apply as a 
general principle, it should, I think, be taken with some 
