Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 January 1878 — Meal for Cows. [ARTICLE]

Meal for Cows.

In a pamphlet, entitled “ Meal Feeding ana Animal Digestion,” Mr. Louis W 7 Miller, of Stockton, N. Y., dairyman of great experience, advocates the use of meal for cows during Winter. He says that three quarts of good Indian meal, fed under proper conditions, is more than the equivalent for all the good hay a cow can be coaxed to eat—that the animal does not need to have its stomach distended with a great bulk of woody fiber, which imposes upon the system a large amount of extra mechanical work both in the processes of digestion and remastieation—that, in brief, bulk in food is not advantageous, but to the contrary, and that nutriment in food governs the condition and health of the animal, and that condensation of nutriment is Upie economy. Mr. Miller has conducted physiological investigations into the functions of the four stomachs of the cow, whence it appears that meal follows the.same course as herbaceous food, and stays longer in the rumen than coarse food, while it also digests more thoroughly than when the energies of the stomach are divided between meal and coarse herbage. The Western New York Dairymen’s Association appointed a committee to examine into the system; the report shows the following facts: The examination was conducted upon Mr. Miller’s herd of Chatauqua County native cows, the average live weight of which was 900 pounds. The herd were fed exclusively upon corn-meal for seven weeks, each animal, according to its digestive capacity, making an average of about three quarts of meal per day for each cow. The animals did not ruminate, did not manifest so much desire for food as cows fed on hay alone in the usual way, a little less than they will eat, showed no signs of unrest or suffering, and at the time of going back to hay, the cows had neither lost nor gained flesh. After returning to hay, their stomachs filled and ruminating went on normally, and, when turned to grass, the animals took on flesh faster than those wintered m the usual way. Their daily yield of milk was twenty-nine pounds three ounces, or one pound eleven ounces Ser cow more than that of any other erd sent to the cheese factory. As regards the economy of mealfeeding Mr. Miller points out that'one bushel of corn, groufid and tolled, will last an ordinary cow of 900 pounds weight twelve days, ptid is equal to 240 pounds of hay. Corn at sixty cents per bushel is therefore the equivalent of hay at live dollars per ton <>f -2,1 mo pounds, and where it can be had at that rate the costof wintering the a nimal will range from seven dollars to ten dollars, according to coldness and length of the foddering season. But hay as a rule costs at least ten dollars per ton, and frequently much mure. Hence the estimated saving by meal-feeding is placed at from five dollars to, twenty per animal, according to the respective prices of corn and hay.—X K Gerald. • ■