The Stock-Feeder's Manual Part 9

Straw 7 A. Ruston, I. of Ely. ad lib. 84 10 ad lib. 9 0 1/2 1/2 Bran. 1/3 bush. 8 A. Simpson, Beauly 168 70 14 24 lb. 10 0 Straw. 9 H. J. Wilson, Mansfield ... 52-1/2 ... ad lib. 7 3?

10 " " 42 87-1/2 ... ad lib. 9 0 ---+-------------------------+---------+---------+------+-----------+------ In this table the asterisk (*) means that the grain is crushed or ground.

STABLE FEEDING DURING WINTER.

---+------------------+------+-------+------+--------+---------+------+------ No. Name and Address. Hay. Oats. Beans. Roots. Sundries. Straw. Weekly Cost.

---+------------------+------+-------+------+--------+---------+------+------ lb. lb. lb. lb. lb. lb. s. d.

1 Professor Low --Elements of Potatoes Agriculture 56* 56* ... 56+ ... 56* 6 6 2 H. Stephens --Book of the Turnips Farm 112 35 ... 112 ... ... 6 0 3 J. Gibson, Woolmet Potatoes --H. Soc. 1850 ... 84 ... 217+ 217+ 112 9 0 4 --Binnie, Barley ad Seaton ... 70* 28* 243+ 42+ lib. 11 6 5 --Thomson, ad Hangingside ... 84 14 336 14 lib. 9 6 6 W. C. Spooner, Ag. Soc. Journ. vol. ix. ... 63 ... 42 ... 196 4 9 7 T. Aitken, ad ad Spalding, lib. lib. Lincolnshire (2/3) 37 35 ... ... (1/3) 9 0 8 G. W. Baker, Woburn, Bedfordshire ... 60* 20* ... ... ... 9 8 9 R. Baker, Writtle, Ess.e.x 70 42 ... ... ... 140 5 0 10 J. Coleman, ad Cirencester ... 84 16 ... ... lib. 7 3 11 T. P. Dods, ad Hexham ... 95 ... 56 ... lib. 8 0 12 J. Cobban, Linseed ad Whitfield 84* 60* ... ... 3-1/2 lib.* 7 3 13 S. Druce, jun., Swedes 2 Ensham 112 52 ... 70 ... bu.* 7 0 ad ad 14 C. Howard, lib. lib. Biddenham (2/3) 52 17 84 ... 1/3* 8 6?

15 J. J. Mechi, M.Wurzel ad Tiptree. 49* 70* ... 210 ... lib.* 7 6 16 W. J. Pope, ad Bridport 2* 84 ... ... ... lib. 9 0?

17 S. Rich, Didmarton, Grains ad Gloucestershire 168 63 ... ... 2 bush. lib. 10 8 18 H. E. Sadler, Lavant, Suss.e.x 140 84 ... ... ... ... 9 9 19 J. Morton, Carrots ad Whitfield Farm ... 126 ... 350 ... lib. 10 9 20 E. H. Sandford, Bran ad Dover 56 42 ... ... 12 lib. 5 6 21 A. Simpson, Tail Corn ad Beauly, N.B. ... 49 7 105 21 lib.* 5 6 22 H. J. Wilson, Bran ad Mansfield 42 52-1/2 ... ... 21 lib. 6 6?

23 F. Sowerby, Aylesby, North ad Lincolnshire 112 28 Cut Oat Sheaf. ... lib.* 8 0?

---+------------------+------+-------+------+--------+---------+------+------ Where an asterisk (*) is attached to any item, it is to be understood that the corn has been bruised or ground, or the hay or straw has been cut into chaff. Where a dagger (+) is appended, the article so marked has been boiled or steamed. A mark of interrogation (?) indicates that the result so marked is uncertain, owing to some indefiniteness in the account given.

On feeding horses with pulped roots, Mr. Slater, of Weston Colville, Cambridgeshire, says:--

I give all my cart horses a bushel per day of pulped mangel, mixed with straw and corn-chaff. I begin in September, and continue using them all winter and until late in the summer, nearly, if not quite, all the year round, beginning, however, with smaller quant.i.ties, about a peck, and then half a bushel, the first week or two, as too many of the young-growing mangel would not suit the stock. I believe pulped mangels, with chaff, are the best, cheapest, and most healthy food horses can eat. I always find my horses miss them when I have none, late in the summer. I give them fresh ground every day. Young store beasts, colts, &c., do well with them.

[Footnote 20: Five pounds of linseed will make about seven gallons of gruel, and suffice for five good-sized calves; considerable allowance must, however, be made for differences of quality in the linseed, that from India not being gelatinous enough, and therefore boiling hard, instead of "coming down kindly."]

[Footnote 21: "Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society," vol. x.x.xix.]

[Footnote 22: From Mr. Horsfall's Essay on Dairy Management, in "Journal of Royal Agricultural Society," vol. xviii., part i.]

PART IV.

MEAT, MILK, AND b.u.t.tER.

SECTION I.

MEAT.

No one ought to feel a greater interest in the subject of meat in all its branches than the stock feeder. Just in proportion as this kind of food is agreeable to the taste, easily digestible, and rich in nutriment, will the demand for it increase. The quality of meat is, in fact, a primary consideration with the producer of that article; and he whose beef and mutton are the most tender and the best flavored will make the most profit.

_Quality of Meat._--The flesh of herbivorous animals is composed of muscular and adipose (fatty) tissues. The muscles consist of bundles of elastic fibres (_fibrine_), enclosed in an alb.u.minous tissue formed of little vessels, termed cells, and intimately commingled with water, and a mixture of alb.u.minous, fatty, and saline matters. The leanest flesh (muscles) contains fat, but the latter acc.u.mulates in certain parts of the body--often to such an extent as to seriously interfere with the functions of life. The red color of flesh is due to a rather large proportion of blood, which it contains in minute vessels; and the slight acidity of its juice is owing to the presence of _inosinic_ acid, and probably of several other acids. The agreeable odour of meat, when it is subjected to the process of cooking, is developed from a complex substance termed _osmazome_.[23] This const.i.tuent varies in nature and quant.i.ty in the different animals--hence the variety in flavor and odour of their flesh--and its amount increases with the age of the animal.

The alb.u.men of the muscles, and their fatty and saline const.i.tuents, are digestible; but it is generally believed that the elastic fibres, and the h.o.r.n.y cellular tissue which binds them into bundles, are not a.s.similable. It is more certain that the crystalline substances found in flesh, such as, for example, _kreatine_, are incapable of ministering to the nutrition of animals.

The composition of flesh varies very much--that of a very obese pig containing more than half its weight of fat, whilst in some specimens of "jerked beef," imported from Monte Video, scarcely 5 per cent. of that substance was found. The flesh of a fat ox has on an average the following composition:--

Per cent.

Water 45 Fatty substances 35 Lean flesh, or muscle 15 Mineral matters 5 --- Total 100

I have examined for Dr. Morgan several specimens of the corned beef recently prepared in South America, by "Morgan's process." The following were the average results of three a.n.a.lyses:--

Per cent.

Water 40 Fatty matters 21 Lean, or muscular flesh 27 Mineral matters (chiefly common salt) 12 --- Total 100

It may not here be out of place to direct attention to the composition of a kind of animal food extensively purchased by the poorer cla.s.ses, and known under the term of slink veal. It is the flesh of calves that are killed on the first day of their existence, and also, I have reason to believe, that of very immature animals--of calves that have never breathed. The flesh is of a very loose texture naturally, and is still further puffed out by air, which is usually supplied from the lungs of the operator. This kind of meat, though regarded as a delicacy by some people, is not held in much estimation, otherwise its price would be higher than it is. It is at present sold at about 4d. or 5d. per pound, sometimes even at a lower rate. Apart from the disgusting process of "blowing" veal, so generally adopted, the use of this food is extremely objectionable, owing to its great tendency to produce diarrhoea. To the truth of this a.s.sertion every physician who has studied the subject of dietetics can testify. I have a.n.a.lysed a specimen of it (purchased from a person who admitted that it was part of a calf a day old), and obtained the following results:--

100 parts contain--

Per cent.

Water 7225 Fat 617 Lean flesh 1846 Mineral matter 312 ------ Total 10000

I believe that a large portion of the lean flesh is indigestible; and altogether I may safely say of this kind of meat that it is, especially during the prevalence of cholera, an unsafe article of diet. Of course these observations do not apply to _fed_ veal, the only kind which respectable butchers, as a rule, offer for sale.

Young meat is richer in soluble alb.u.men and poorer in fibrine and fat than the matured flesh of the same animal. The flesh of the goat contains _hircic_ acid, which renders it almost uneatable, but this substance is either altogether absent from, or present but in minute proportion in, the well-flavored meat of the kid. The flesh of game contains abundance of osmazome, a substance which is somewhat deficient in that of the domestic fowl.

Owing to the marked individuality which man exhibits in the selection of his food, and to the intimate relationship subsisting between food and the organism it nourishes, it is impossible to arrange the alimental substances in the strict order of their nutritive values. You can bring a horse to the water, but you cannot compel him to drink it; you can swallow any kind of food you please, but you cannot force your stomach to digest it. It is, therefore, vain to tell a man that a certain kind of food is shown by chemical a.n.a.lysis to be nutritious, when his stomach tells him unmistakeably that it is poisonous, and refuses to digest it.

In the matter of dietetics Nature is a safer guide than the chemist.

Many substances, when viewed only in the light shed upon them by chemical a.n.a.lysis, appear to be rich in the elements of nutrition, yet when they are introduced into the stomachs of certain individuals, they disarrange the digestive organs, and sometimes cause the whole system to go out of order. Every day we see exemplified the truth of the proverb, that "one man's meat is another man's poison." There are persons who relish and readily digest fat pork, and yet they cannot eat a single egg with impunity; others enjoy and easily a.s.similate eggs, but their stomachs cannot tolerate a particle of fat bacon.

It is not merely the composition of an aliment and its adaptability to the organism which determine its nutritive value--its digestibility and flavor are points which affect it. There are few people in these countries who are disposed to quarrel with beef; but no one would prefer the leg of an elderly milch cow to the sirloin of a well-fed three-year-old bullock: yet if our selection were to be determined by the a.n.a.lysis of the two kinds of beef, we would be just as likely to prefer the one as the other. No doubt the relative tenderness of meats may be ascertained by experiments conducted _outside_ the body; but tenderness is not in every case synonymous with easy digestibility.

Veal contains more soluble alb.u.men, and is, consequently, far more tender than beef; yet, as every one knows, it is less digestible. It is curious that maturity renders the flesh of some animals more digestible, and that of others less digestible. Flavor has something to do with these differences. Beef is richer than veal in the agreeably flavorous osmazome, and the flesh of the kid is dest.i.tute of the disagreeable odour of the fully-developed goat. The superiority of wild-fowl over the domesticated birds is solely owing to the finer flavor of their flesh.

The habits of animals, and the nature of their food, affect the quality of their flesh. Exercise increases the amount of osmazome, and consequently renders the meat more savory. The mutton of Wicklow, Wales, and other mountainous regions is remarkably sweet, because the animals that furnish it are almost as nimble as goats, and skip from crag to crag in quest of their food. The fatty mutton, with pale muscle, which is so abundant in our markets, is furnished by very young animals forced prematurely into full development. Those animals have abundance of food placed within easy reach; their muscular activity is next to _nil_, and the result is, that their flesh contains less than its natural proportion of savory ingredients. It is the same with all other animals.

The flesh of the tame rabbit is very insipid, whilst that of the wild variety is well flavored. Wild fowls cooped up, and rapidly fattened, lose their characteristic flavor; and when the domesticated birds become wild their flesh becomes less fatty, and acquires all the peculiarities of game. Ducks, whether wild or tame, ordinarily yield goodly meat; but the flesh of some of those that feed on fish smacks strongly of cod-liver oil. Birds which subsist partly on aromatic berries a.s.similate the odour as well as the nutriment of their food. The flesh of grouse has very commonly a slight flavor of heather. Foster states that in Tahiti pigs are fed upon fruit, which renders their fat very bland and their flesh like veal. Animals subjected to certain kinds of mutilation fatten more rapidly than they do in their natural state. Capons increase in weight more rapidly than c.o.c.ks, poulards than hens, bullocks than bulls, and cows deprived of their ovaries than perfect cows. Why it is that the flesh of mutilated animals should be fatter and more tender than that of whole animals, we know not; we only know that such is the fact. The hunting of animals renders their flesh more tender; the cause a.s.signed is, that the great exertion of the muscles liquefies their fibrine, which is the toughest of their const.i.tuents. The meat of animals brought very early to maturity is seldom so valuable as the naturally developed article. Lawes and Gilbert state that portions of a sheep that had been fattened upon _steeped_ barley and mangels, and which gave a very rapid increase, yielded several per cent. less of cooked meat, and lost more, both in dripping and by the evaporation of water, than the corresponding portions of a sheep which had been fed upon _dry_ barley and mangels, and which gave only about half the amount of gross increase within the same period of time.

Although the digestibility and flavor of meat (and of every other kind of food) affect its nutritive value, these points are in general of far less importance than its composition. Potatoes are not so nutritious as peas, because they contain a smaller amount of fat and flesh-formers; but they are more digestible. Fish contains less solid matter than flesh, and is less nutritious, yet a cut of turbot will be, in general, more easily digested than an equal weight of old beef. The fact is, that digestibility and flavor are only of great importance to dyspeptic persons. In the healthy digestive organs a pound weight of (dry) food of inferior flavor and slow digestibility will be just as useful as the same weight of well-flavored and easily a.s.similable aliment, provided all other conditions be alike. If the food be eaten with a relish, and tolerated by the stomach, its digestibility will not, except in extreme cases, affect in a very sensible degree its nutritiveness.

Were one question in animal nutrition satisfactorily answered, it would then be comparatively easy to arrange aliments in the order of their nutritive value. That question is--What are the proper relative proportions of the fat-forming and flesh-forming const.i.tuents of our food? It is constantly urged, that the food of the Irish peasantry contains an excess of the fat-forming materials in relation to the muscle-forming substances; and the remedy suggested is, that their staple article of food--potatoes--should be supplemented with flesh, peas, and such like substances, in which, it is supposed, the elements of nutrition are more fairly balanced. In potatoes, the proportion of fat-formers (calculated as fat) is about five times as much as that of the flesh-formers; but these principles exist in the same relative proportions in the fat bacon with which the potato-eater loves to supplement his bulky food. In bread we find the proportion of fat-formers to be only 2-1/2 times as much as that of the flesh-formers, whilst, according to Lawes and Gilbert, the edible portion of the carca.s.s of a fat sheep contains 6-1/2 times as much fat as nitrogenous (flesh-forming) compounds. It is evident, then, that meat such as, for example, the beef recently imported from Monte Video, from which the fatty elements of nutrition are almost completely absent, cannot be a suitable adjunct to a farinaceous food.

There is evidence to prove that in the animal food consumed by the population of these countries, the proportion of fatty to nitrogenous matters is greater than in the seeds of cereal and leguminous plants, and but little less than in potatoes. "It would appear to be unquestionable," say Lawes and Gilbert, "therefore, that the influence of our staple _animal foods_, to supplement our otherwise mainly farinaceous diet, is, on the large scale, to _reduce_, and _not to increase_, the relation of the _a.s.sumed_ flesh-forming material to the more peculiarly respiratory and fat-forming capacity, so to speak, of the food consumed." It must be remembered, too, that the fat _formers_ are ready _formed_ in animal food, whereas they exist chiefly in the form of starch, gum, sugar, and such-like substances in vegetables.

According to theory, 2-1/2 parts of starch are equivalent to, _i.e._, convertible into, 1 part of fat; but it is not certain whether the force which effects this change is derivable from the 2-1/2 parts of starch, or from the destruction of tissue, or of another portion of food. If there be a tax on the system in order to convert starch into fat, it is evident that 2-1/2 parts of starch, though convertible into, are not equivalent in nutritive value to one part of fat.

It is quite certain that millions of healthy, vigorous men have subsisted for years exclusively on potatoes; but it is no less clear that a diet of meat and potatoes enables the laborer to work harder and longer than if his food were composed solely of potatoes. But we have seen that the relation between the flesh-forming and fat-forming elements is nearly the same in both potatoes and meat; so that the superiority of a meat or mixed diet cannot be chiefly owing, contrary to the generally received opinion, to a greater abundance of flesh-forming materials. As the proportion of flesh-formers to fat-formers is so much greater in wheaten or oaten bread than in potatoes, and as peas and other vegetables rich in nitrogenous compounds are practically found to be an excellent supplement to potatoes, it is probable that the latter may be somewhat relatively deficient in flesh-forming capacity. It is, however, in all probability the great bulk of a potato diet, and its total want of ready formed fat, that render the addition to it of animal food so very desirable. The concentrated state in which the ingredients of flesh exist, the intimate way in which they are intermixed, their agreeable flavor, and their (in general) ready and almost complete digestibility, appear to be the princ.i.p.al points in which a meat diet excels a vegetable regimen. There may be others, which, though less evident, are, perhaps, of equal importance. At all events, the general experience of mankind testifies to the superiority of a mixed animal and vegetable diet over a purely vegetable one.

_Is very Fat Meat wholesome?_--The enormous and rapidly increasing demand for meat which characterises the food markets of these days, has reacted in a remarkable manner upon the nature of the animals that supply it. Formerly the animals that furnished pork, mutton, and beef, were allowed to attain the age of three years old and upwards before they were considered to be "ripe" for the butcher; but now sheep and pigs are perfectly _matured_ at the early age of one year, and two-year-old oxen furnish a large quota of the "roast beef of old England." The so-called improvement of stock is simply the forcing of them into an unnatural degree of fatness at an early age; and this end is attained by dexterous selection and crossing of breeds, by avoidance of cold, by diminishing as much as possible their muscular activity, and lastly, and chiefly, by over-feeding them with concentrated aliments.

Every one knows that a man so obese as to be unable to walk cannot be in a healthy state; yet many feeders of stock look upon the monstrously fat bulls and cows of cattle show prize celebrity as normal types of the bovine tribe. It requires but little argument to refute so fallacious a notion. No doubt it is desirable to encourage the breeding of those varieties of animals which exhibit the greatest disposition to fatten, and to arrive early at maturity; but the forcing of individual animals into an unnatural state of obesity, except for purely experimental purposes, is a practice which cannot be too strongly deprecated. If breeders contented themselves with handing over to the butcher their huge living blocks of fat, the matter would not perhaps be very serious; but, unfortunately, it is too often the practice to turn them to account as sires and dams. Were I a judge at a cattle show, I certainly should disqualify every extremely fat animal entered for compet.i.tion amongst the breeding stock. Unless parents are healthy and vigorous, their progeny are almost certain to be unhealthy and weakly; and it is inconceivable that an extremely obese bull and an unnaturally fat cow could be the progenitors of healthy offspring. We should by all means improve our live stock; but we should be careful not to overdo the thing. If we must have gaily-decked ponderous bulls and cows at our fat cattle exhibitions, let us condemn to speedy immolation those unhappy victims to a most absurd fashion; but in the name of common sense let us leave the perpetuation of the species to individuals in a normal state, whose muscles are not replaced by fat, whose hearts are not hypertrophied, and whose lungs are capable of effectively performing the function of respiration.

Mr. Gant, in a small volume[24] devoted wholly to the subject, describes the serious functional and structural disarrangements which over-feeding produces in stock. He found the heart of a one-year old Southdown wether, fattened according to the _high-pressure system_, to be little more than a ma.s.s of fat. In several other young, but so-called "matured"

sheep, he found more or less fatty degeneration of the heart, and extensively spread disease of the liver and of the lungs. A four-year old Devon heifer, exhibited by the late Prince Consort at a Smithfield show, was found to be in a highly diseased state. It was slaughtered, and of course its flesh sold at a high price as "prize beef," but its internal organs came into Mr. Gant's possession. The substance of both ventricles of the heart had undergone all but complete conversion into fat; one of its muscles was broken up, and many of the fibres of the others were ruptured. In another animal the muscular fibres of the heart had given way to so great an extent that if the thin lining membrane (_endocardium_) had burst, death would have instantly ensued.

The slightest exertion was likely to cause this catastrophe; but, fortunately enough in this case, the animal was not capable of exertion, for though under three years of age, it weighed upwards of 200 stones: this animal had received for some time before its exhibition, the liberal allowance of 21 lbs. of oil-cake (besides other food) per diem.

"A pen of three pigs," says Mr. Gant, "belonging to his Royal Highness the Prince Consort, happened to be placed in a favorable light for observation, and I particularly noticed their condition. They lay helpless on their sides, with their noses propped up against each other's backs, as if endeavouring to breathe more easily, but their respiration was loud, suffocating, and at long intervals. Then you heard a short catching snore, which shook the whole body of the animal, and pa.s.sed with the motion of a wave over its fat surface, which, moreover, felt cold. I thought how much the heart under such circ.u.mstances must be laboring to propel the blood through the lungs and throughout the body. The gold medal pigs of Mr. Moreland were in a similar condition, if anything, worse; for they snored and gasped for breath, their mouths being opened, as well as their nostrils dilated, at each inspiration.

From a pig we only expect a grunt, but not a snore. These animals, only twelve months and ten days old, were marked '_improved_ Chilton breed.' They, with their fellows just mentioned, of eleven months and twenty-three days, had early come to grief. Three pigs of the black breed were in a similar state, at seven months three weeks and five days, yet such animals 'the judges highly commended.'"

Dr. Brinton denies the accuracy of several of Mr. Gant's statements relative to the structural changes in the muscles of obese animals; but I do not think that he has succeeded in disproving the princ.i.p.al a.s.sertions made by the latter.

There is conclusive evidence to prove that one of the effects of the present mode of fattening beasts is disease of the internal organs of the animals; but it is by no means certain that the flesh of those diseased animals is as unwholesome food as some writers a.s.sert it to be. The flesh of an over-fattened animal differs from that of a lean, or moderately fat one, in containing an exceedingly high proportion of fat; but it has not been proved that the fat of prize animals differs from the fat of lean kine, or that it is less wholesome or nutritious. Be the flesh of those exceedingly fat animals unwholesome or not, there are thousands, ay, millions of persons, to whom its greasy quality renders it peculiarly acceptable; and as for those who dislike fat--they do not usually invest their money in the flesh of prize sheep or oxen.