77o 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
''THE BALANCED RATION/' 
TIIK 8CIKNCK OK FKP:i)ING STOCK. 
I’ART VI. 
A.ssuming that we now understand the 
theory of mixing a ration, we want to stop 
for a while and ask what becomes of this 
food after the cow gets her lips over it. 
A short talk about dujCHti/m, will make 
plainer several things about feeding cat¬ 
tle, and certainly give us more respect 
for the cow. We have no space here for 
a long di.scourse on physiology, but a few 
facts about what the cow does with her 
food are necessary if we would feed her 
properly. 
Now, a cow is a delicate and wonder¬ 
ful machine. Raw materials like hay 
and grain, pass into her mouth, and by 
some wonderful process, are changed 
into milk or meat. All must admit that 
there can be no luck or chance about 
this—it must be all done orderly, and by 
some fixed law of procedure. When that 
is understood, it is easy to see that you 
can easily upset that machine by creat¬ 
ing conditions that will upset the laws of 
digestion. When you feed or handle that 
cow so as to make her uncomfortable or 
unhappy, you are sure to interfere with 
the digestion of her food, and thus you 
diminish her ability to change that food 
into the products you desire. 
A cow is both engine and machine : 
She must make heat in her body, force 
to move her muscles and machines and 
tools for making milk and meat, as well 
as these products themselves. And, mind 
you, she must do all this on the food that 
you give her to eat—she can get it in no 
other way. Thinking of this fact, gives 
us a new idea of the importance of bal¬ 
ancing a ration so that the cow will have 
her task of digesting the food made as 
easy as possible for her. 
Now when you mix the food and pu 
it before the cow, your part of that work 
is done. What does she do with it ? A 
great many of you have seen cows 
slaughtered, and know something about 
the “works” that keep the machine 
going. These “ works ” comprise a good 
shai’e of the animal’s weight. In a 
1 , 000 -pound cow, the tongue and gullet 
will weigh six pounds, stomach and in¬ 
testines ()o pounds, heart four pounds, 
liver and gall I.t, lungs, windpipe and 
diaphragm, 13 pounds, and so on. In¬ 
side the stomach and intestines will be 
found from l.'iO to 180 pounds of half-di- 
gested or waste matter. The cow takes 
a mouthful of food and chews it with 
her teeth. At the same time, a quan¬ 
tity of saliva or spittle pours into the 
mouth from certain glands about the 
jaw, to moisten and pai-tly dissolve some 
of the food. You will notice that most 
horses chew their food somewhat longer 
than cattle do. The reason for this is 
iinderstood when we go back of the 
tongue down into the cow’s stomach. 
The cow is said to have four stomachs. 
line these compartments. And so this 
process of soaking, chewing and grind¬ 
ing goes on until the food passes into 
the fourth stomach, where true diges¬ 
tion begins. First the nutriment in the 
food is dissolved by various weak acids 
poured into the stomach much as saliva 
is poured into the mouth. Then by a 
delicate and marvelous process, this 
soluble nutriment is passed through the 
walls of the stomach, through cells and 
passages of almost inconceivable small¬ 
ness, and sent, in the blood, to every 
part of the body to do its needed work. 
The part of the food not digested in the 
stomach, is passed on into the intestines 
—a coiled-up tube of vai*ying size, 
over 100 feet long. Here some more of 
it is dissolved and digested by means of 
bile from the liver, and various other 
juices—the remainder at last passing 
away in the form of manure. 
Thus, a mouthful of hay may be taken 
into the cow’s mouth to-day, rechewed 
at intervals, and passed slowly along 
ground up and softened, part of it di¬ 
gested, and part passed as manure at the 
end of 2}4 or three days. You ean see 
from the nature of things, that if the 
cow is sick, ailing or uncomfortable in 
any way, if she be made too warm or 
too cold, if she be frightened or hurt, 
less of that food will be digested, and 
more of it will pass as manure. You 
will also see that if the cow is to do 
her full duty, that paunch must be 
kept filled. The cow is half water any¬ 
way, by weight, and you can readily 
see what will happen if the water supply 
in that great paunch is not kept up. In 
that case, the cow cannot float the “cud” 
up to her mouth for rechewing. Not 
only that, but the food will dry out in 
hard lumps, whieh will clog up the en¬ 
tire machine. The eow must not only 
drink all she wants, but does better 
when some of her food is watery. Nor 
will this paunch do its work when 
filled with water alone. There must be 
solid matter in it as well. Hence we 
see the need of providing “ bulk ” in the 
eow’s ration. Her whole digestive ap¬ 
paratus was designed to make use of the 
hiillty foods like hay, straw and stalks. A 
horse cannot do that so well, because his 
stomach is much smaller in proportion 
to his size. We can feed him on stronger 
foods—too much hay is bad, for it 
will make him “ pot-bellied ”—which is 
what we want in a good milch cow, for 
that indicates a great capacity for hold¬ 
ing food. 
You will notice that the particles in 
cow manure are very finely ground up 
while in horse manure they are quite 
large. That is, as we now see, because 
the digestive apparatus of the cow is 
especially designed for softening and 
grinding up coarse fodders. We have re¬ 
ferred to this here because it shows the 
necessity of “ bulk ” in the cow’s ration, 
and because it shows how coarse fodders, 
like stalks, straw and rough hay, may 
be fed to a cow to give this bulk, if 
strong grains are mixed with them to 
balance the ration. In this w ay one can 
sell good Timothy hay, and supply the 
bulk of the cow fodder in ensilage or 
have space to try to illustrate how this 
soluble nutriment in the blood is depos¬ 
ited in tiny cells to repair muscles, form 
tiny globules of fat for future butter or 
to make fatty cells for future tallow. 
Remember, that it is all done in the 
blood. Once digested, this food does not 
pass back into the stomach except as 
digestive acids, bile or saliva. It is de¬ 
posited somewhere in the body, passed 
away through the urine or, in some dis¬ 
eased conditions, kept in the blood to 
poison that life-giving fluid, and cripple 
its functions. 
When we think of this delicate and 
sensitive machine working in this way, 
it is easy to see how the feeding of too 
much muscle-makers or too much fat 
may drive the “ works ” out of gear, or 
how sick, cold or half-starved cows can¬ 
not have healthy and active blood ? And 
another point in this connection : Here, 
we will say, are two cows eating much 
the same ration. One makes 12 pounds 
of butter a week and the other six. 
What does that mean ? We now see that 
one cow has a better digestive apparatus 
than the other. She chews, grinds and 
dissolves more of the nutriment out of 
her food, and passes it on into her blood. 
In the other cow, this difference goes on 
to the manure heap. In the first cow, 
the tendency is for the blood to deposit 
more of this nutriment at the udder, and 
less on the back and ribs as meat and 
tallow, while the second cow’s blood does 
the reverse of this. When we attempt to 
improve cows by breeding, what we 
really do is to secure animals that inherit 
these superior digestive powers, and this 
ability to deposit soluble nutriment in 
the udder instead of on the ribs. 
But what makes the machine go ? What 
makes the heart work like a pump, and 
why is a cow warm ? Food again. As 
surely as fuel must be burned under an 
engine, so food in the body must be 
broken up and go through chemical 
changes that produce heat. We have 
not the space here to show how the 
lungs aid in this work by bringing pure 
air in to meet and purify the blood, and 
then expelling foul air from which the 
oxygen has been taken. Strictly speak¬ 
ing, this action in the body, of oxygen 
(thus taken from the air through the 
lungs) on the carbon in the dissolved fat- 
formers, is a combustion differing from 
the burning of a stick, only that it is 
slower. Stop and think that the rotting 
of a log will, in time, produce the same 
effects as burning that log. In one case, 
the log is reduced to ashes in a few 
minutes, in the other the process takes 
years ; yet the final result is the same. 
In one case, the heat is driven off in a 
short time, and we feel it; while in the 
other, it is given off so slowly that it is 
not perceptible. 
Now this same slow combustion takes 
place in the body. The fat-formers are 
consumed, giving out warmth enough to 
supply the animal heat, and keep the 
whole machine going. When you run 
violently, you become heated. Stand 
still and breathe as rapidly and deeply 
as you can, and you will warm up. Why? 
Because, by breathing faster, you bring 
more oxygen through the lungs into the 
blood, and thus increase the combustion 
and consequent heat. Now don’t you 
see why people in cold weather and hard 
at work crave, not only muscle-makers, 
but also foods containing starch and 
sugar which supply the needed fat-form¬ 
ers to burn slowly in the blood ? 
Uo you not also see why your cow can¬ 
not give good returns for her food when 
you keep her in a cold stable ? She 
must use up her food, and even the fats 
stored up in her body, to keep herself 
warm. 
tility. That is what we call the meinurlol 
value of foods, and is quite important. 
We will take these things up next. And, 
now, after what we know of the cow, of 
this wonderful and intricate machinery 
that turns our rough farm crops into 
dairy products, how can any man abuse 
her ? Will it be possible for a man to 
kick his cow in the stomach, strike her 
with a club, make her go thirsty, or 
hungry, or cold, when he knows what 
she is doing for him, and how within 
her hide this delicate blood machine is 
at work, so sensitive to every shock or 
neglect ? 
§HU’n*tisiinn. 
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CALIFORNIA 
IN 3; DAYS 
Without change of cars. All 
meals served in dining ears. 
Palace drawing-room sleeping 
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privileges without extra cost. 
but strictly speaking, there is but one 
long tube running clear through the 
body. Below the gullet, this tube en¬ 
larges into four compartments. The 
cow has the power to pass food down 
into either of these compartments, or 
from one to another. The first stomach 
is called the “ paunch.” In it the food 
floats in a liquid made up of water 
drunk by the cow, and the saliva. This 
paunch is only a storehouse. When the 
cow has swallow'ed all her food, she is 
at liberty to chew' her “cud.” This 
“cud” is only a second chewdng of the 
food. By contracting the muscles of 
the paunch and gullett, a quantity of 
the semi-liquid food is floated up to the 
mouth. Once there, the cow squeezes 
out and sw'allow’s the liquid, and re¬ 
chews the solid portion, sending it back 
to the second or third stomach, where it 
is still further ground and broken up by 
rubbing against the rough walls that 
eheaper forage. Thei-efore we must con¬ 
sider “bulk” in our analyses. 
Well, now, after grinding, soaking and 
dissolving, as stated, more or less of the 
muscle-makers, fat-formers and pure fat 
passes through the walls of the stomach 
and intestines into the blood. The 1,000- 
pound cow will carry in her veins about 
50 pounds of blood. By the pump-like 
action of the heart, this blood is sent 
everyw'here—all over the body—and in 
it goes this soluble nutriment to the 
udder, wdiere the milk is secreted, to the 
kidneys, where the useless water and 
wastes are taken out in the form of 
urine, to the lungs, where the’ blood is 
purified by contact with the air, to the 
head, to the liver, where bile is secreted 
to help digest the food and keep the 
passage through the intestines free, to 
the parts of the body where fat is 
located — to every muscle and every 
fiber of lean meat. We would like to 
Now we ought to be ready to take up 
the characteristics of different foods. 
This will be an important matter, aside 
from the chemical value of such foods. 
If a food tastes good, naturally a cow 
will chew and rechew it. That is what 
we want her to do ; for the more care¬ 
fully it is ground up, the more likely 
will it be to digest fully. Again, there 
may be some principles in foods that 
act on the system to promote digestion, 
produce constipation, or an increased 
action of the liver, kidneys, heart, etc. 
Then, again, the fertilizing elements 
in foods. We can see that the manures 
will be rich or otherwise as the un¬ 
digested food contains more or less fer- 
on sale at 
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