Con vention—principles of stock feeding. 151 
A machine is valuable in proportion to the cheapness of the en- 
■ergy it exerts, not in proportion to the amount of that energy. So 
"with this milk-producing machine, the cow, the most profitable cow 
IS the one that produces the cheapest milk, not necessarily the one 
that produces the most. And the man who is able to so feed his 
■cows that they will produce the greatest quantity of milk from a 
•dollar’s worth of food will, other conditions remaining the same, be 
the most successful in his business. 
It being true then, that food is most thoroughly digested, when 
the different substances of which it is composed bear the relation 
to each other above stated, it must as certainly be economy in the 
feeding of milch cows to ascertain the composition of their food, 
and regulate that of the daily rations fed, by combining varieties of 
food having different chemical composition, in such a manner, that 
the mixture shall contain the different food-ingredients, in the 
proper proportions. If a coarse fodder, as straw or the marsh 
grasses so largely «j3roduced in this state, which is poor in nitrogen¬ 
ous matter and fats, is to be used, in order that the greatest pro¬ 
portion of it may be digested, some food rich in these ingredients 
should be fed with it. Or if a food contains more than one part of 
digestible albuminoids to five and one-half of carbohydrates, it will 
then be economy to give with it, some cheaper fodder, poor in this 
Yaluable food-ingredient, in amount sufficient to reduce the propor¬ 
tion in the whole ration to that in which digestion takes place. In 
•order to fully realize the economy of this method of feeding, it is 
necessary to keep two things in mind: first, that the nitrogenous 
portion of food is the most valuable, and hence the necessity of 
avoiding the waste; and, second, that it will only be completely 
digested when fed in no greater proportion than that above given. 
It is also true that when fed in smaller proportions, the carbohy¬ 
drates will not be completely digested, yet as the loss of these is 
slight, compared with that of the same quantity of albuminoids, it 
is the wiser course to see that there is no excess of these in the 
rations given. One great difficulty in putting these principles into 
practice is in finding the composition of food. Certainly no one 
•can afford to pay a chemist for analyzing his cattle food. 
Fortunately there is no necessity for this. Both grain and 
coarse fodder, when grown and cured in the same manner, have very 
nearly the same chemical composition. These have been analyzed, 
and the results condensed in tables. 
