152 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
FOOD FOR STOCK DESIGNED FOR SERVICE AND 
SLAUGHTER. 
[The following paper which was read by Mr. E. N. 
Horsford, at the 4th Agriculture Meeting at the old 
State Hall, Albany, Thursday evening, April 4th, has 
been furnished at our request for publication in the Culti¬ 
vator.] 
I. It is well known that working cattle and horses per¬ 
form given amounts of service with less exhaustion when 
fed upon grain, than when fed upon hay or potatoes. 
The reason is this. All labor consists in repeated mus¬ 
cular contractions. No muscular effort can be performed 
without the expenditure of muscular fibre. Muscular fi¬ 
bre is composed of several elements, one of which is ni¬ 
trogen, and the substance is said to be a nitrogenized 
compound. Nitrogenized compounds are supplied to the 
wasting muscle from the blood. The blood is supplied 
with nutritive matter from the stomach. The stomach 
receives its supplies from the food which the animal eats. 
Grain and hay and carrots, turneps, potatoes, pump¬ 
kins, &e., differ from each other in chemical composition. 
The grains contain more of the nitrogenized compounds, 
which are consumed by the active muscle, than the pota¬ 
toes and kindred agricultural products. 
These nitrogenized compounds have been found to be 
very nearly the same things in the proportions of the el¬ 
ements which form them, in grains and vegetable pro¬ 
ductions generally, that they are in the stomach, the 
blood and the muscle. In other words, the matter to be 
expended in labor is formed in plants and passes to the 
stomach and floats in the blood, and is secreted to form 
muscular fibre, without any change. 
Some vegetable products contain more of this matter 
than others, and are therefore more profitably employed 
as food for working cattle and horses. 
The destruction of muscular fibre which takes place 
with each contraction, and the consequent fatigue, may 
be illustrated in this manner. 
The muscle is a series of parallel fibres. These fibres 
are made of little particles arranged side by side, or end 
to end, all of which attract each other. Those immedi¬ 
ately contiguous, attracting each other more strongly than 
those at an interval asunder. If now some of the parti¬ 
cles be withdrawn, the contractions among the remaining 
portions of the fibre, are less effective than they would be 
if the sections were not interrupted; because the attrac¬ 
tion at the ends of the sections is weakened by the increa¬ 
sed distance. If the chasms were filled by the deposition 
of new particles from the blood, the same effort with 
equal energy may be repeated; and if the blood were an 
exhaustless reservoir, the nitrogenized compounds might 
be as constantly supplied to the wasting tissues as muscu¬ 
lar effort should require. But at the close of the diges¬ 
tion of a meal, the supply of nitrogenized compounds is 
in a measure arrested; and the quantity in the blood, be¬ 
ing a fixed quantity, determined by the kind and amount 
of food eaten, will in process of time be exhausted. The 
Inability to muscular effort arises from consumption of 
muscular fibre, and exhaustion of nitrogenized constitu¬ 
ents of the blood. The fatigue is the natural pain which 
accompanies this condition of a muscle. 
This explanation, though gross in comparison with the 
delicate and elaborate processes constantly going on 
among the organic tissues, may not he altogether with¬ 
out service in enabling us to comprehend the demand 
which labor makes upon the nitrogenized and other com¬ 
pounds—makes upon food which contains these essentials. 
Other organized substances are expended in labor, and 
must be replaced through the blood from the food, such 
as the earthy matters of which bone is composed. 
Some kinds of food contain these essentials in larger 
quantities than others, and will therefore be more profit¬ 
ably grown and consumed. 
II. It is also well known that cattle and sheep fatten more 
rapidly upon some substances than upon others, and that 
the food which will sustain much physical labor, is not 
necessarily the food that will fatten most expeditiously. 
To know what kinds of food will most advantageously 
increase the flesh, the mere fat of stock designed for 
slaughter, and what admixtures of the two kinds of foot- 
are best adapted to sustain a good coat of flesh and yet 
permit vigorous service, is obviously of no small impor¬ 
tance. 
Prout, anxious to know what kinds of food and what 
proportions of those kinds were best adapted to the phy¬ 
sical development of apimals, commenced his investiga¬ 
tions by an analysis of the human milk. He found it 
consisted of three substances dissolved in water; one of 
these containing nitrogen, and the other two destitute of 
nitrogen. 
The nitrogenized substance is called caseine, and is the 
basis of cheese. The other two substances were sugar 
of milk and oil. 
The oil is separated from the other two by agitation, 
and the particles aggregate in the form of butter. 
The sugar gives the sweetness to new milk, and in the 
fermentation which succeeds, gives rise to the acid prin¬ 
ciples observed in milk after standing a day or two. 
The caseine or basis of cheese being the only organic 
principle that could form muscle or tissue of any kind, 
because the only one that contains nitrogen, the other 
two substances must have another office to perform. 
The oil of the milk is deposited in the form of fat, 
around the muscles and under the skin, and the sugar, 
except a part of it, being converted into fat, is gradually 
resolved into the various secretions, tears, mucous, sali¬ 
va, perspiration, &c. 
The use of the oil and sugar as types of the two great 
classes of oleaginious and saccharine food, have been 
made an interesting subject of investigation, and shown 
to be the source of heat in the animal body. 
The use of the caseine as the type of the nitrogenized 
or albumenous compounds, has already been referred to. 
It makes the muscle, the tendon, the tissues, brain and 
integuments. 
The appetite demands an admixture of these. Bread 
is chiefly composed of starch and gluten—substances alli¬ 
ed to sugar and caseine. Civilized men, every where, 
overspread the piece of bread with butter or oil, that the 
three kinds of food may be mingled. Rice must be eaten 
with butter or sugar. Potatoes w'ith gravy, which con¬ 
sists of the expressed nitrogenized juices of meats. A 
meal cannot be made, the laborer feels, without meat for 
the nitrogenized constituent, the caseine; potatoes or 
rice or bread for the saccharine ingredient, the sugar; 
and butter or gravy for the oleaginous constituent or the 
oil. 
The student, whose muscles make no expenditures, 
thinks the meat non-essential. He can live on bread and 
ale. 
The Greenlander who fears the severity of his high 
northern latitude, thinks oil the great essential, and de¬ 
vours pure fat and tallow with a relish akin to that of 
more southern men for sugar. 
To return. Some kinds of food are better adapted to 
fatten cattle and sheep. Why? Because they contain 
more oil. 
Some are better adapted to sustain cattle in labor. 
Why? Because they contain more of the substances ex¬ 
pended in service. 
III. It is not only true that different kinds of food contain 
in unequal proportions, the caseine, the oil and the su¬ 
gar; but also true that varieties of the same grafin have 
them in varying proportions, and the same variety of 
grain has them in unequal proportions if grown upon 
soils of unequal fertility; and even in two successive sea¬ 
sons, one season being adapted in the amount of its sun 
shine and dew and rain, to advance the crop and bring 
out a large return, and the other with its cloud and mil¬ 
dew and drouth fitted to shrivel the stalk and starve the 
kernel. 
The grain of corn may be dissected so as to display the 
several principles of which it is composed. 
The cotyledon or embryo, contains the earthy matters, 
and most of the nitrogenized substances that contribute to 
the formation of the organic tissues in general. 
The circle immediately aroimd the cotyledon contains 
a salt of a per-oxide of iron.* This is to serve in color¬ 
ing the blood. The bulk of the seed is composed of 
starch and oil. The oil goes to fatten, the starch to sup- 
