104 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Fen, 1900) 
much of it consists of husk. If weight is to be our chief guide (after conditia) 
as freedom from must and other defects), the clean and heavy maize captwl® 
both our eye and hand. 
Great working studs have been dependent at times on the management ® 
the forage for their existence, in a different sense from the physiological 
digestive. They could not be made to pay as a means of traction unless serio 
economies could be effected in the diet table. In the hay famine of a few ye® 
back it will be remembered that ‘corn,’ as our American friends call mall 
and maize only, was cheaper than it had ever been before in this country, a! 
everyone was tempted into using too much of it. Correspondents on the oth? 
side of the water are disposed to contest our English statements as to this £00) 
and for the excellent reason that they do not get the bad results we do. 4” 
extremes of heat and cold, to which we are strangers, demand of Ameri¢al) 
horses and cattle a greater store of live fuel. The laying up of internal fat, 
which we complain in maize-fed animals here, is not such an evil there, wh® 
weeks of bitter cold follow on the blood-thinning heat of an average summel 
In America homing pigeons are most succussfully reared and trained on th 
food—not because it is cheaper, but because our shrewd cousins ffind it actual’) 
best in their climate. In England the bird trained on maize would have a pol 
chance against one fed on ‘good peas, as we find the latter build the powe i 
muscles required in flight, while maize adds body-weight and oppresses 
breathing apparatus. 
AILMENTS FROM MAIZE-FEEDING. 
Again, we find that acute indigestion, colic, impaction of the bowe 
swelled legs, grease, farcy (so called), are all immediately increased in a stud? 
horses where the maize ration is increased, and the numbers are sufficient! 
enable one to get at averages. ‘There is not the same wind-power, nor 
hardness of neck, or roundness of rump and quarter to a horse fed on malf 
that there is in one having the same value, let alone weight, of good Scott! 
oats. Internal fat is accumulated, and the circulatory as well as respirato!l 
organs labour for want of room when put to the severer forms of exertion. 
To cattle and sheep maize is best fed, and with cake or other oleagino™ 
food, plus plenty of bulk in the way of grass, hay, or oat straw—the lea®) 
harmful, from our English experience. But there will be always greater CY) 
for the vet. in a district where it is much used, as fardel-bound or impaction ® 
the third stomach is a common result of any but the most judicious feediny 
Given to animals outdoors, and in cold weather, the greatest benefit is derivab! 
from such a heat-giving corn as maize. 
Pigs fatted chiefly on maizemeal show the effects of climate, perhaps ® 
much as pigeons. Readers have very likely noted that bacon made from mai/® 
fed pigs in this country melts away in the frying-pan, the fat globules leavidl 
the meshes of connective tissue and filling the pan with “ gravy,” while #) 
matutinal rasher appears on the table in a very attenuated condition. A daitf) 
fed animal that has had the usual skim milk and sharps while very young, 2 
barley-meal later on, yields a bacon that is firm in the fat as well as the lea 
and only lets free a quantity of fat globules sufficient for its own cooking, ©) 
very little more. JI have had bacon from America which was fed entirely 
maize, and it did not melt away in the pan. Why is it? What answer can’ 
give but “Climate” ? Why should the Englishman be prone to get fat at abo) 
40, and the American be tall and thin? Climate. r have ventured to ol@) 
the foregoing remarks as a result of long and careful observation, and think Wy 
should pay more respect to the opinions of practical feeders who are success!” 
in their own country or district. Are we not too much disposed to rely up} 
analytical tables, and too little upon the men who succeed as stockmen, but ba”) 
little to say, and a difficulty in saying it? As illustration of what I have ™ 
feebly expressed, I would point to many quite illiterate hands who acquire 
art of successful feeding, but “when you ask how it is done” they give you !) 
better explanation than would “soldiers of the Queen.” 
