CUTTING AND COOKING FOOD FOR ANIMALS.

BY E. W. STEWART, NORTH EVANS, NEW YORK.

A cursory survey of the business of agriculture will at once reveal the fact that the great effort of the farmer is to supply food for his animals, and that it requires more food to supply the animals kept in the United States than to feed its whole population. It becomes, then, one of the most important inquiries, how to economize this food so as to yield the greatest return. A saving of even ten per centum would amount to millions of dollars annually.

The discussion of the topics embraced in this article at State fairs, and by individuals, shows that farmers are anxiously inquiring upon this subject. Care ful experiment is, no doubt, more satisfactory, and more convincing to the practical farmer, than any theory, however plausible, and he generally wishes to know, first of all, what the facts are. If they are upon the right side, he cares little for the reasons upon which the facts are founded. But there is no doubt, also, that a clear theory, or the justification of a process, increases confidence in its utility. The writer must, therefore, beg the indulgence of the reader, while he goes somewhat into the theory and reasons for cutting the dry food of

animals.

Much has been said for and against this practice. One affirms that teeth are given to animals expressly to masticate their food, and that all attempts to grind or pulp it artificially, are impeachments of the wisdom of the Creator. The same line of argument would abolish all shelter and care of animals by man; would return man himself to the savage state, and feed him on wild fruits and nuts. Those who talk so reverently of nature, and fear so much to improve upon her, forget that cattle in their wild state crop only green, succulent grasses, and do not dry and lay up a supply for winter use. As soon as the grass becomes ripe and tough in the north, they migrate toward the south, where they find green herbage. Thus it will be seen that man, in domesticating animals and keeping them in a cold climate, changed their mode of living, substituting dry for green food in winter, and that it thus becomes necessary to compensate for this by assisting the animals in mastication. Man has produced from the wild crab-apple the splendid modern pippin; and from the lank wild bull and cow, the magnificent proportions of the Durham and the rounded beauty Devon. This, too, has all been done in opposition to the natural habits of tree and animal, and man is quite likely to continue his efforts so long as he is rewarded by such splendid results.

WHY FODDER SHOULD BE CUT.

The object of mastication of food is to comminute it, to break down its struc ture, and to render it more easily acted upon by the gastric juice, thus enabling the animal to appropriate its nutriment. Now, the more finely divided food is when subjected to the gastric juice, the more rapidly and easily it is digested. For when finely divided it presents many hundred times more surface to the action of the digesting fluid. This is simply represented in cooking fine meal or whole grain. We know it takes but a few minutes to cook the meal, while hours are required to soften the whole grain.

When cattle eat succulent food, the fibre is easily broken and reduced to a pulpy mass; but not so with dry, woody fibre, which must be broken and comminuted before the food contained in it is accessible for animal nutrition. This the animal seldom does, and more especially the non-ruminating; therefore it becomes highly necessary that we should use machinery to assist the animal, as much as possible, in extracting the nutriment contained in dry food. And if it be profitable to cut hay, straw, and other coarse fodder, for the purpose of breaking the fibre, and rendering it more easy of mastication and digestion by the animal, then it is well to cut or divide it as finely as is consistent with economy. There is no danger of inventing machinery which will cut or pulverize it too finely. The great want now is, a machine, cheap and durable, which shall reduce woody fibre to pulp. This will require a machine which shall bruise as well as cut, so as to leave the whole fibre thoroughly mashed and divided. It will not be liable to the objection urged, that it will leave nothing for the animal to do; for this dry fibre, when reduced to the greatest degree practicable, will still require more mastication than green grass. Our whole effort in cutting and steaming is merely to produce an imitation of nature's green food.

MIXING DIFFERENT QUALITIES Of food.

Here another advantage not to be overlooked is, that it enables the feeder to mix different qualities of food together, making it all palatable, and thus saving all. This is a matter of great importance, and alone would vastly more than pay all the expense of cutting. In this manner poor straw and good hay may be mixed, coarse swale meadow hay with fine hay, corn stalks with hay, and pea or bean straw with hay, when the poorer qualities would not be eaten alone; or, if hay be scarce or of too high price, cut straw may be made equivalent to the best hay, by mixing two quarts of fine middlings or bran, or one quart of corn meal with a bushel of straw.

The writer of this paper has practiced cutting and steaming fodder, of all kinds, in winter, for a stock numbering from ten to fifty-five neat cattle and horses, during the last ten years. He therefore deems his experience sufficient to enable him to speak with some degree of confidence. He tried a long series of experiments to determine the quantity of middlings or meal necessary to mix with a bushel of straw, to render it equivalent to the best hay. Ten animals of about uniform size, standing in the same stable, were parted-five being fed upon hay, and five upon the mixture. At first four quarts of middlings were mixed with a bushel of straw. The animals were fed for one month-five upon this mixture, and five upon the hay. Those fed upon the mixture were found to gain decidedly upon those fed upon the hay alone.

The experiment was then reversed, putting those upon the mixture that had fed upon the hay, and vice versa. At the end of the month those fed upon the straw and middlings had gained rapidly, while those fed upon the hay had hardly held their condition. Then the experiment was continued by reducing the quantity of middlings one-half, or to two quarts, on which mixture the animals did rather better than those upon hay, while, upon reversing, those at first fed upon the hay when fed upon this mixture did better than those on hay. Upon several trials afterwards it was uniformly found that a bushel of straw with two quarts of middlings was quite equal to the same weight of cut hay, and was worth 25 per cent. more than uncut hay. It was found that the animals would eat 25 per cent. more hay uncut than cut. The same experiment was then tried with corn meal, and one and one-half pints were found to make a bushel of straw equal to hay, though the formula is generally given as a quart to a bushel of straw, which will render almost any quality of straw equal to the same weight of good timothy hay.

The writer has found for many years that he can winter his stock in better condition on straw and middlings, or meal, in the proportions given, than on hay. This is a large item near a good hay market, and where straw is worth but little, or in a grain country, where little else than straw is raised as fodder for animals. In this way all the coarse fodder on the farm of every description may be consumed by animals, and thus turned into money. Where steaming is practiced there is also a large profit. Besides, this enables the feeder to prepare a special food to produce such special results as he may desire. It is well known that the intelligent feeder may increase the frame, or muscle, or fat of an animal exclusively, or he may increase them all together. If he wishes to increase the frame and muscle particularly, he will give food rich in phosphate of lime and gluten, without having much oil or a large proportion of starch: and for this purpose pea or bean meal, mixed with his coarse fodder, will produce the desired result. If he wishes to lay on fat principally, he will use corn meal or oil meal. If to produce growth of the animal in frame and muscle, as well as fat, let him mix the different kinds of food together. Thus he may produce such results as he pleases, and, at the same time, use what would otherwise be refuse and waste.

It is shown, by accurate observation, that hay, straw, or other coarse fodder, when well cut, is more uniformly digested by both neat cattle, horses, and sheep, than uncut. In England large feeders have estimated the gain in nutriment and saving of waste in hay to be equal to 25 per cent. Some experi ments in this country have estimated the gain even higher, and certainly the gain is more in cutting coarse fodder than on hay.

WHAT IS GAINED IN CUTTING FOR A SMALL STOCK.

An experiment will illustrate the profit of cutting. When keeping a small stock, which would consume thirty tons of hay in a winter, seven tons of hay were sold, and seven tons of middlings bought and used upon cut straw, (two quarts upon a bushel,) and the stock wintered in fine condition. The straw was thus turned into twenty-three tons of hay, worth, that year, $18 per ton in barn, or $405; (generally it is worth $12 per ton.) Hay, in most localities, is worth as much per ton as middlings, and half to three-fourths as much as corn meal; therefore the avails of one-fourth the quantity of hay requisite to winter a stock of animals will purchase the middlings or meal necessary to use upon the straw, and the hay (or its value) be saved to the farmer. Indeed. from long practice, the economy of the straw cutter is as well established with the writer of this article as that of the mowing machine.

But it is sometimes said that it may pay on a small scale, and accordingly many small hand-machines are found by which farmers cut for a few cows. a pair of horses, still feeding the principal part of their stock uncut food. In this idea the ordinary rule of manufacturers is reversed, viz: that what wil pay upon a small scale will pay much better on a large scale. It costs more in proportion to make one wagon than one hundred; so it costs more in proportion to cut fodder for five animals than for fifty. To show that it pays a large scale to cut hay, we have only to refer to the fact that the large oma bus lines and street railroad companies of our large cities cut all the hay and coarse fodder used for their hundreds of horses. These companies have learned, from practical experience, that the saving is many times the cost of cutting.

When cutting is done for a large stock with the largest size two-horse mi chine, it takes but little longer to cut a ton of hay than to handle it without cutting. Horse or steam power is much cheaper than hand power when more than a few animals are to be fed.

STRAW CUTTERS.

Much improvement has been made within a few years in the construction of straw cutters. It is of the highest importance in selecting a machine to get one that cuts short and with perfect regularity; and to this end great attention must be paid to the feed apparatus. Unless the hay or straw is delivered to the knives with perfect regularity, the work will be badly done. The greatest fault of most machines is the defect in this part of the machinery. Some are fed by hand. These should be discarded, as there can in this way be no regularity of cut. A short and regular cut secured, next in importance is strength, simplicity, and durability. The two machines that combine these requisites most perfectly are the Cummings's patent, made at Fulton, New York, and the Empire Cutter, made at Rochester, New York. The writer has used one of the former for some six years, and he can say for it that it works as well as a machine can which cuts without mashing the fibre. The perfection of this kind of machine is yet to be invented which shall mash or pulp the fodder. machine first named cuts from one-eighth to six-eighths of an inch, but both cut well and with regularity.

COOKING FOOD FOR ANIMALS.

The

Steaming food is less practicable but even more important than cutting. Cooking food for animals is of comparatively recent date. A brief notice of its rationale will demonstrate its importance, as well to animals as to man.

Pereira says: "To render starchy substances digestible, they require to be cooked, in order to break or crack the grains; for of the different lamina of which each grain consists, the outer ones are the most cohesive, and present the greatest resistance to the digestive power of the stomach, while the internal ones are least so." "Starch," says Raspail, "is not actually nutritive to man until it has been boiled or cooked. The heat of the stomach is not sufficient to burst all the grains of the feculent mass which is subjected to the rapid action. of this organ. The stomachs of graminiverous animals and birds seem to possess, in this respect, a particular power, for they use feculent substances in a raw state. Nevertheless, recent experiments prove the advantage that results from boiling the potatoes and grain, and partially altered farina, which are given to them for food; for a large proportion, when given whole, in the raw state, passes through the intestine perfectly unaffected as when swallowed." Braconnot found unbroken starch grains in the excrement of hot-blooded animals fed on raw potatoes; hence he adds, "the potatoes employed for feeding cattle should be boiled, since, independently of the accidents which may arise from the use of them in a raw state, a considerable quantity of alimentary matter is lost by the use of these tubers in the unboiled state."

So much for the effect of heat upon grain and roots; but it may be asked whether we can derive the same benefit from cooking hay, straw, and other coarse fodder for stock. The following quotation from Regnault will show what difference exists between them, the stems containing woody fibre as well as cellulose, while roots and grains do not:

"A microscopic examination of the various component parts of plants shows them all to be constituted of cellular tissue, varying in form according to the part of the vegetable subjected to examination. The cavities of the tissue are filled with very diversified matter; sometimes, as in the case of wood, the parietes of the cells are covered by a hard and brittle substance called lignum, or woody fibre, which frequently almost completely fills their interstices; while, at other times, as in the grains of the cerealia, potatoes and other tubers, the cells contain a quantity of small ovoidal globules, varying in size, constituting

fecula or starch; and lastly, in the case of the young organs of plants, the cells contain only a more or less viscous fluid, holding in solution mineral salts and various organic substances, the principal of which are gums, gelatinous combinations, designated by the general name of albuminous substances." We conclude, then, that if heat aids in rendering the nutritive principles of roots and grains more accessible to the assimilating faculty, it will also assist in softening the fibre of hay and straw. The cell walls which imprison the alimentary substances mentioned, will, by the joint processes of cutting and steaming, be more or less broken and weakened.

The following extract from Johnston's Agricultural Chemistry shows the further effect of heat upon starch itself:

* * *

"When wheat flour, potato, or arrow root starch is spread upon a tray and gradually heated in an oven to a temperature not exceeding 300° F., it slowly changes, acquires a yellow or brownish tint, according to the temperature employed, and becomes entirely soluble in cold water. It is changed into dextrin gum. During the baking of bread this conversion of starch into gum takes place to a considerable extent. Thus Vogel found that flour which contained no gum, gave, when baked, a bread of which 18 per cent., or nearly one-fifth of the whole weight, consisted of gum. Thus one result of baking is to render the flour starch more soluble, and therefore more easily digested." Of starch he says: It is a property of starch of all kinds to be insoluble in cold water, but to dissolve readily in boiling water, and to thicken into a jelly or paste as it cools." It is supposed that, by digestion, starch becomes converted into gum or sugar, and the latter probably becomes absorbed. It is also an ele ment of respiration, and, according to Liebig, contributes to the formation of fat in animals. His theory is, no doubt, well founded, and explains the fatten ing of animals when fed upon Indian corn.

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VALUE OF STRAW, ANALYSES, ETC.

Few farmers are aware of the value of straw. By the present system of feeding in this country little or no account is made of it. It serves mostly as litter for animals. Let us examine the general analysis of straw, as compared with the forage crops and grains. The following table is from the Cyclopædi of Agriculture:

Average composition of wheat straw.

Dried at 212° Fahrenheit, 100 parts contains nitrogenous substances, or— Muscle-producing substances...

Heat-producing substances.

Mineral substances

Woody fibre.

2.05

35.06

56.87

6.02

100.00

(J. H. Salesbury.) (Prof. Way.)

Corn fodder and bean straw.

Corn fodder.

Bean straw.