456
National Nutrition Conference
Unwise and faulty animal feeding leads not only to a lowered general
resistance against disease, but it results in the production of a human food
substance of less than perfect nutritional value.
Further study is needed regarding the influence of foods upon amount and
quality of the animal product, especially in relation to fattening pigs, dairy
cows and both table and egg-laying poultry. Such subjects as flavour,
development of taints and rancidity, discoloration, texture, variations in
vitamin and mineral contents, etc. of meat and meat products, etc. as
influenced by the feeding of animals are not fully appreciated, much less
exhaustively studied.
So far as the feeding of sheep, cattle, and poultry and to a less extent of
pigs is concerned, however, the greatest need is for a drastic division of grass
management and grassland policy on the majority of farms. Grass and hay
form more than 66 per cent of the food consumed as dry matter by cattle and
sheep and under British conditions the soil is capable of growing grass better
than most other crops. There is a lack of knowledge of many of the funda-
mental details of grassland management which farmers should possess. Further
work is needed on such aspects as the effects of different types of management,
stocking, resting, rotational grazing, etc. on parasite population, on the sur-
vival of pathogenic bacterial flora, on variations in the mineral contents of
cereals and legumes (Ca, P 4 , Mg, Mn, Fe, etc.) on the prevention or avoidance
of ' sickness ' in grasslands (sheep-sick, poultry-sick, horse-sick and so on).
The work entails the cooperation of botanist, plant geneticist, soil expert,
agriculturist and veterinarian, and the improvements possible would amply
repay the sums needed to finance adequate research.
It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of grass and grazing on
animal health. No method of artificial indoor feeding ever gives results
which are comparable with those obtained by proper use of good grazings,
and there is adequate evidence to show that correctly managed grassland is
one of Britain's richest natural resources for the production of healthy fer-
tile stock yielding products of the highest nutritive quality.
Exercise and General Management.—Much of our commercial animal
production on British farms is wasted because of insufficient attention to
general management. Exercise is of fundamantal importance to the circu-
latory, respiratory, digestive and reproductive systems and yet the average
commercial breeding animal is often denied even a modicum. The system of
keeping breeding stock under restricted conditions, e.g. dairy cows in byres
in winter, pregnant cows folded on arable land, bulls in loose-boxes, breeding
birds under the battery system, etc. has a profound cumulative effect which
is often only realized when too late. A better utilization of open yards and
cattle courts, spacious and sheltered yet not wasteful, would go far to improve
the general health of dairy herds in districts where the winter is too severe
for outdoor grazing, while more shelter belts and wind breaks around grass
fields would also help. The system of running grazing animals (including
pigs and poultry) upon the same grassland year after year is dangerous and