Rensselaer Union, Volume 1, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 August 1869 — The Feeding of Animals. [ARTICLE]

The Feeding of Animals.

There are a number of considerations, varying very greatly, by which the feeding of animals should be regulated. To a certain extent the objects designed to be answered by food are the same, all food being intended to meet the demands of respiration and nutrition, but it is for the intelligent stock owner to select and administer those best suited to his particular purpose both in quality and quantity. The very young animal for the formation of bone requires Jtlie phosphate of lime in large quantities which is yielded in larger aortions in milk than from any other , hence the young destined for maturity should be supplied with milk from the dam;until a steady growth can be maintained by the substitution of grain, roots, hay or grass. The growing animal in addition to bone wants muscle, as also a certain amount of fotio sustain their formation, and these are procured from the grain and grass in their seasonable state. Filling to repletion or stuffing should only be resorted to with the animal intended for tire butcher. Allen remarks: “An animal should never be fat but once,” adding that alternately improving and falling back is injurious to all animals, and that as much as starving is to be depreciated, the prejudicial effects of repletion are still greater. No practice is more impolitic than to barely sustain the stock through the winter or a part of the year, as is the case in too many instances, and allow them to improve only when turned on grass in'summer. Besides subjecting them to the risk of disease consequent upon their privation of food, nearly half of the year is lost in their use, or m maturing them for profitable disposal: when if one-third of the stock had been sold the remainder would have peen kept in a rapidly improving condition, and at the age of three years they would probably be of equal value as otherwise at five or six. It is true that breed has much to do with this rapid advancement, but breed is useless without food to develop and mature it. —American Stock Journal

Mulberry Trees in California.—At a late meeting of the California Academy of Sciences, Dr. Gibbons said there were, b 7 estimate, 15,000,000 to 20,000,000 mulberry trees in California. This extraordinary production is the result of a State bounty, intended to make California a silk country. For this purpose, a bounty was offered for cocoons, aiso. By a singular and unforeseen circumstance, the purpose of the State to encourage silk manufacturing h*s been entirely defeated. There is a demand for the eggs of the silk worm, at pripes that indupe mulberry men to abandon the idua of making silk; and the curious result is 20,000,000 trees, and never a hank of silk, nor, so far as we know, any promise that the intentions of the Legislature will ever be fulfilled,— Exchange. Kansas and Silk Raising—ln the county of Franklin, Kansas, about fifty miles south of Lawrence, the pioneers of a French colony have purchased a wide tract of land, anefare making a» large expenditure of money for the purpose of setting up there on the now wild prairie, a manufactory of silk velvet. The colony will ooptain within itself all the forms oT industry necessary to the success of its-en-terprise, from the growth of the mulberry to the last finishing touch on the beaub- | ful fabric. Of course some time must

ekiwe before Ike plantations of tree* will yield leaves enough to feed many worms; but in the meantime, tho few colonists who arc already on the ground will demote themselvts to raising and' feeding cattle, and to tho general improvement" and decoration of their estate.