The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1894-01-24
Rational Cattle Feeding---No. 4.
from the French Of Jules Crevat. ]

Rational Cattle Feeding---NO. 4.
tFrom the French of Jules Crevatl
But even under these conditions, the
special nutritive equivalents for each
kind of product fail still to give any
certainty in practice; for experience
proves that the nutrtive value of the
same food, consumed by the same ami
NAL, under the same circumstances of
production, will still vary greatly ac-
cording as this food is given alone, or
associated with this or that other food;
that is to say, the nutritive value of
feeding materials will vary according
to the way they are mixed in the ration.
This makes it altogether impossible TO
determine the nutritive equivalents by
weight; and shows that there are not
really any equivalent weights of forage,
in practical sense. Two weighings
of different forages can never equalize
themselves in feeding value, except as
precisely the same conditions can be
maintained.
The chemists, recognizing this i'm
possibility, reasonably thought that
they might be able to solve the question
of feeding cattle by the ingenious
method of equivalent rations." Adj
hitting that average meadow hay is the
typical food of grass-eating animals, as
offering the most suitable composition,
and taking as basis the rules of ex-
perience, as laid down by practical
men, the rate of the ration necessary
for 100 kilos GOO pounds) of the live
weight of the animal, the first agrcul-
tural chemists made up the ration of
different feeding stuffs in such way
that they would contain the same
amount of protein, and of the respira-
tory elements, as the proper ration OF
hay. This was the process of Mons.
Boussingault; and after him, of Pierre,
Payen, and others.
Thus, healthy mich COW of 900
kilos q ,22O pounds) rationed at 335 per
cent, should get 20 kilos GA pounds) of
good hay, containing, according to
Boussingault's analysis:
| LA kilos of protein, or abuminoids.
SsS kilos of starchy matter equa.. $3.50 k. carbon
&c kilos of fatty matter equal os2l k. carbon
Respiratory food as valued in carbon, 1850 kilos.
Upon this basis a ration was COM
posed, equivalent to twenty kilos of
hay, with mixture of other materials,
representing all together the same
quantities, Ia kilos of protein, and
4.55 klos of carbon in respiratory
food; observing, all the time, that these
foods should be such as are suitable to
the animal in their nature, and in the
bulk of the rations.
The rations equivalent to twenty
kilos of hay should be made, for ex-
ample, in the following manner for
COW in milk: Twenty-Five pounds
clover hay, forty-four pounds field
beets, nine pounds oat straw. This
ration would contain, in all, 3.3 pounds
protein and eleven pounds carbon, or
little more protein and little less car
bon than the normal ration of hay.
Such was the classical chemical method,
in the French school, for making up
the ration; and this for score of years.
This method of feeding, which took
for its model good ration of ordinary
field hay, is neither just nor practical,
for it carries no evidence that the hay
offers the best proportion of nutritive
elements, either plastic or respiratory,
for the different kinds of animals, and
for different kinds of products. Far
from that, practical experience proves
that hay, fed alone, while suitable for
store cattle, or such as are producing
but little, is altogether insufficient for
animals in full production; and that in
this case we must have recourse to
richer food, such as the cereal grains
or leguminous plants for horses at
work, bran and roots for cows in milk,
and oil cake and oily seeds for fatten-
ing stock. To sum the matter up, if
the animal in its free state finds in the
natural vegetation of the fields and the
forests the needed food for its mainte-
nance and multiplication, it is no longer
the same with the domesticated ami
mails, from which we demand varied
services that create in them new and
artificial necessities, demanding for
their satisfaction an appropriate repair
alive system of feeding. And, besides
this, there is difference in hay; and
surely M. Boussingault's Alsatian
hay is quite different from the hay of
Normandy, or of the Swiss mountains,
where the cattle prosper very well,
without that being a sufficient reason
why we should allow, as a type of good
hay, the one rather than the other.
The preceding method of feeding,
| yub;ob o6p,;tc tho nroOortion olitu of