River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1874-05-05
Food and Milk.

The following is an extract from an
address recently delivered by DIR. Vo-
elcker; of England, on milk and its
authorizations
The influence of food on the quality
of milk is very striking. A half-starved
COW yields but little milk and poor
milk. On the other hand the liberal
supply of peas or bean-meal, or oil
cake, and other food rich i'll nutrition,
tells dirtctly, both on the quality and
quantity of the milk. Nothing, there
fore can be more injudicious, because
Improbable, than to stint mich cows
in food. The finest favored milk and
butter, L need hardly remark, are pro-
duced by cows fed in summer entirely
on grass and rich permanent pastures,
and in winter on nothing else but hay,
made of fine sweet grass. Few persons
however, have either the opportunity
or can afford the luxury of keeping
cows all the year round on grass or
hay, and dairy farmers, either in towns
or in the country, in order to carry on
profitable trade, find it necessary to
make use of turnips, mangolds, meal,
brewers grains; bran, rape, inseed and
cotton-cake, palm-nut meal, and other
auxiliary kinds of food. Turnips yield
a watery milk, and are Objectionable on
account of the turnipy flavor which
they give to the milk. Mangolds are
less Objectionable, but should not be
given to milk-cows without an allow
ance of 3 to 4 TBS. of meal per head.
Of all kinds of meal, none is equal in
milk-producing properties to bean or
pea-meal-a fact which finds a ready
explanation in the circumstance that
bean or pea-meal contains ON an average
from % to % per cent. of heterogeneous
constituents, or the same class of COM
pounds to which the curd of milk be-
longs, and that it is likewise rich in
phosphates, or bone-earths, in which
milk abounds. Egyption lentils, when
they can be procured, answer equally
well with bean meal, for they resemble
intimately in composition beans or
peas. Linseed cake produces much
and rich milk, but unless it is pure and
fresh cake of the finest description. 1t
seriously Injuries the quality of the milk,
and / would warn especially against the
use of adulterated cheap Insecticides,
which are so frequently sold as genuine
Insecticides, for such cakes give bad
flavor to the milk, and often injure the
health of the cows. One of the best
and most economical kinds of cake for
milk-cows is decorticated cotton-cake.
Fine decorticated cotton-cake is rich in
fat and nitrogen, it also contains a large
proportion of phosphates, and is
thus admirably well adapted for milk.
cows. In order to make the best use OF
decorticated cotton-cake, it is desirable
to reduce it to a coarse powder, and to
mix the powdered cake with Indian
corn or barley meal in about equal
parts. If the cake cannot be conven
iently reduced to powder, i would sug
gest its being soaked in water after
having been passed through cake
breaker. BY this means the cake be.
comes softened and is rendered more
digestible than il is when it is given to
cows in hard, dry, rough pieces. Rape
cake is likewise an excellent food foI
milk-cows, provided it is free from an
undue admixture of wild mustard seed,
which frequently occurs III rape-cake
made from Indian seed to an extent
which renders it perilous to the stock.
The best pe-cake is green German
rape or Rubsen cake, one of the cheap
est and best concentrated kind Of food
that can he given to milk cows. Bran
or pollard, as is well known, produce
good and rich milk
Nothing can be better as an auxiliary
winter food for milk-cows than 4 lbs. of
bran made into a thin mash, to which
about to 4 lbs. Of bean meal is added.
Along with this about 20 lbs. of man
Colds, and due proportion of hay, or
hay and straw chat, will supply food
mixture which produces much and first
class milk. Brewers grains are the
staple food in town dairies, for at the
price at which grains can be bought IN
large towns, there is no food which
equals brewers grains for producing
good milk in the most economical man
ner. Brewers grains, / find, are much
more nutritious than their appearance
seems to warrant. Even in the wet con-
dition in which they are obtained from
Che breweries, ana holding from ID TO n
per cent. of water, they contain fair
proportion Of ready-made fat and flesh
forming matter,