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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 68

Dry Foods

Dry Foods.

A few remarks may be necessary with reference to the selection of artificial or dry foods suitable for dairy-cattle and milk-production. It is quite possible that the majority of the New Zealand farmers have not yet found it necessary to use any other foods than those they grow; hut as the dairy-system extends, as cattle of a higher class are introduced, and as greater efforts are made to obtain larger yields of milk, or milk of higher quality, there will in all probability be farmers who will from time to time adopt either British or American ideas, and prepare their rations accordingly. In some parts of England there are farmers who use nothing but hay during the winter, although hay is perhaps the dearest of all foods in this page 83 country; in other districts there are practical men who use none, their rations consisting chiefly of straw-chaff, roots, cake, and meal mixed together, in some instances with grains obtained fresh from the brewery or preserved in pits made for the purpose. In Holland, where hay is unusually cheap, some of the more intelligent farmers lave introduced rape-cake with beneficial results. In France I have seen similarly small farmers use cakes made from chestnuts and [from pumpkin-seed.

Without, however, making any special recommendation to the farmers of the colony to use the foods common in Great Britain—which they would probably be unwise to do, where, from the abundance of grass, such foods are unnecessary—I will simply mention pose which are of chief importance, and which not only have an influence upon milk-production, but, from their manurial value, upon the growth of the grass itself, supposing the cattle to be fed upon it while they are consuming artificial food, or their manure distributed over it when, as is common in England, they are housed in winter, For milk-production perhaps decorticated cotton-seed cake and meal stand at the head, on account of their low price and their high manurial properties. The price may be put roundly at £6 10s. a ton, while linseed cake, also highly prized, costs £1 more. Linseed itself, which much appreciated by milk-producers, is also used with great advantage, especially when it is steamed in water and the resulting oily mass mixed with chaff, roots, and meal. Linseed costs about £2 8s the quarter of eight bushels; bran, costing £5 a ton, is also extensively used; oats, upon which many farmers place great reliance, as they are one of the best milk-producing foods, are by many practical men considered to be the reverse of economical when they cost 18s. to £1 per quarter; while peas and beans ground into meal He highly appreciated and extensively used by those who produce milk for the London market as well as for butter-making. Maize-meal is favoured in the north of England, especially when maize costs from £1 to £1 3s. per quarter, while brewers' grains are extensively purchased in almost all districts; and so far as I have been able to ascertain from actual experience they have no ill effect upon the favour or character of the butter. Among French farmers, how-ever, I have found a deeply-seated dislike to both grains and distillery-refuse in cheese-making districts, and the same antipathy is quite as strong as to the use of barley-meal. I add the following rations, some of which are examples of those adopted on English dairy-farms. The first is that quoted by Mr. Dudley Miller, an American Seeder of Dutch cattle, showing the food given to a very famous cow which yielded an unprecedented quantity of milk in a single year. This ration consisted of (per day)—
Cut potatoes 60
Timothy hay 15
Maize-stalks 2
page 84
Lb. oz.
Wheat-bran 13 2
Blatchford's meal 3
Torley's tonic-meal 6
Salts 6
Water 115
Water in mash 56
Ground oats 13 2
The next ration is that used by a very large and well-known milk-producer in Kent. This gentleman keeps 150 cows upon a very small acreage, and upon my visit to his farm they were all in fine condition. His winter feeding was as follows :—
Mangels 44
Grass silage 26
Oat-husks 2
Hay chaff 1
Grains (brewers') 12
Rice-meal 2
Bran 4
Another ration used in a butter-dairy with considerable success for small cattle, principally Jerseys, was—
Bran 3
Dried grains 4
Linseed
Hay 7
Straw 10

(Grass during the day.)

In this case the bran, grains, and linseed were, later in the season, replaced by cotton-cake, pea-meal, and maize-meal. A third ration, also for small cattle, is as follows:—
Oat-straw 7
Hay 7
Dried grains 3
Bran 2
Cotton-cake 3
Potatoes 14

In the two latter instances the dry matter varied from 20lb. to 21lb., the flesh-forming and heat-and-fat-forming matters being properly balanced. In many instances English farmers give as much as 56lb. of mangels daily, in others as much as 25lb. of hay; but the best feeders, as a rule, make it a practice to give liberal quantities of cake, bran, or meal. Good grass is food which is well balanced by nature, not only for the sustenance of cattle, but for the economical provision of milk. There are probably no other foods which are so well page 85 balanced. Experiments which have been conducted by chemists in England, Germany, and America have demonstrated that a ration, to be economical, should contain a certain proportion of those constituents of food which provide for the heat of the body as well as its maintenance, and for the manufacture of the milk or the meat which it is necessary to produce to obtain a profit. These constituents, which are all found in grass in their required proportions, may be provided by the mixture of such foods as have already been, named in their proper ratio, chemical data being supplied in order to show how each is composed. Perhaps the ablest discussion of this scientific and yet really practical system of feeding is that written by F.J. Lloyd, F.C.S., the Consulting Chemist to the British Dairy-farmers' Association, in the "Live Stock Journal Almanack" of Christmas, 1886, and since extended in the new edition of Mr. I James Macdonald's "Stephen's Book of the Farm."