The Stock-Feeder's Manual the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and feeding of live stock

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Title: The Stock-Feeder's Manual

the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and

feeding of live stock

Author: Charles Alexander Cameron

Release Date: May 19, 2008 [EBook #25520]

Language: English

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PRIZE YEARLING SHORT-HORN BULL, VICTOR EMMANUEL,

THE PROPERTY OF LORD TALBOT DE MALAHIDE,

Was awarded the First Prize in his Section (there being sixteen competitors), at the Show of the Royal Agricultural Society, held at Belfast, in August, 1861. Calved June 24, 1860; sire, Prince Duke the Second (16,731); dam, Turfoida, by Earl of Dublin (10,178); gd., Rosina, by Gray Friar (9,172); ggd., Hinda, by Little John (4,232).

THE STOCK-FEEDER'S MANUAL.

THE

CHEMISTRY OF FOOD

IN RELATION TO THE

BREEDING AND FEEDING

OF

LIVE STOCK.

BY CHARLES A. CAMERON, Ph.D., M.D.,

Licentiate of the King and Queen's College of Physicians in Ireland; Honorary Corresponding Member of the New York State Agricultural Society; Member of the Agricultural Society of Belgium; Professor of Hygiene or Political Medicine in the Royal College of Surgeons; Professor of Chemistry and Natural Philosophy in Steevens' Hospital and Medical College; Lecturer on Chemistry in the Ledwich School of Medicine; Analyst to the City of Dublin; Chemist to the County of Kildare Agricultural Society, the Queen's County Agricultural Society, c.; Member of the International Jury of the Paris Exhibition, 1867; Editor of the Agricultural Review; one of the Editors of the Irish Farmer's Gazette; Author of the Chemistry of Agriculture, Sugar and the Sugar Duties, &c. &c.

LONDON AND NEW YORK:

CASSELL, PETTER, AND GALPIN.

1868.

[All rights reserved.]

LONDON

CASSELL, PETTER, AND GALPIN, BELLE SAUVAGE WORKS,

LUDGATE HILL, E. C.

THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE

Dedicated

TO

THE RIGHT HONORABLE

THE LORD TALBOT DE MALAHIDE, F.R.S.,

President of the Royal Irish Academy, &c. &c. &c.,

ONE OF THE MOST ENLIGHTENED AND LIBERAL PROMOTERS OF AGRICULTURAL IMPROVEMENTS.

THE AUTHOR IS UNDER MANY OBLIGATIONS TO HIS LORDSHIP, FOR WHICH HE CAN MAKE NO RETURN SAVE THIS PUBLIC ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF HIS INDEBTEDNESS.

PREFACE.

Some papers on the Chemistry of Food, read before the Royal Agricultural Society of Ireland and the Athy Farmers' Club, and a few articles on the Management of Live Stock, published in the Weekly Agricultural Review, constitute the basis of this Work. It describes the nature of the food used by the domesticated animals, explains the composition of the animal tissues, and treats generally upon the important subject of nutrition. The most recent analyses of all the kinds of food usually consumed by the animals of the farm are fully stated; and the nutritive values of those substances are in most instances given. Some information is afforded relative to the breeds and breeding of live stock; and a division of the Work is wholly devoted to the consideration of the economic production of meat, milk, and butter.

Within the last twenty years the processes of chemical analysis have been so much improved, that the composition of organic bodies is now determined with great accuracy. The analyses of foods made from twenty to fifty years ago, possess now but little value. In this Work the analyses of vegetables quoted are chiefly those recently performed by the distinguished Scotch chemist, Dr. Thomas Anderson, and by Dr. Voelcker. The Author believes that in no other Work of moderate size are there so many analyses of food substances given, and ventures to hope that the success of this Work may fully justify the belief that a handy book containing such information as that above mentioned, is much required by stock feeders.

102, Lower Baggot Street, Dublin,

April, 1868.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The

CHEMISTRY OF FOOD.

INTRODUCTION.

When Virgil composed his immortal Bucolics, and Varro indited his profound Essays on Agriculture, the inhabitants of the British Islands were almost completely ignorant of the art of cultivating the soil. The rude spoils torn from the carcasses of savage animals protected the bodies of their hardly less savage victors; and the produce of the chase served almost exclusively to nourish the hardy frames of the ancient Celtic hunters. In early ages wild beasts abounded in the numerous and extensive forests of Britain and Ireland; but men were few, for the conditions under which the maintenance of a dense population is possible did not then exist. As civilisation progressed, men rapidly multiplied, and the demand for food increased. The pursuit of game became merely the pastime of the rich; and tame sheep and oxen furnished meat to the lowly as well as to the great. Nor were the fruits of the earth neglected; for during the latter days of the dominion of the Romans, England raised large quantities of corn. Gradually the food of the people, which at first was almost purely animal, became chiefly vegetable. The shepherds, who had supplanted the hunters, became less numerous than the tillers of land; and the era of tillage husbandry began.

At present the great mass of the rural population of these countries subsist almost exclusively upon vegetable aliment—a diet which poverty, and not inclination, prescribes for them. Were the flesh of animals the staple food of the British peasantry, their numbers would not be nearly so large as they now are, for a given area of land is capable of sustaining a far larger number of vegetarians than of meat eaters. The Chinese are by no means averse to animal food, but they are so numerous, that they are in general obliged to content themselves on a purely vegetable diet.

In the manufacturing districts of Great Britain, there are several millions of people whose condition in relation to food is somewhat different from that of the small farmer and agricultural laborer. The artizans employed in our great industries are comparatively well paid for their toil; and the results of their labor place within their reach a fair share of animal food. This section of the population is rapidly increasing, and consequently is daily augmenting the demand for meat. The rural population is certainly not increasing; rather the reverse. Less manual labor is now expended in the operations of agriculture, and even horses are retiring before the advance of the steam plough. The only great purely vegetable-feeding class is diminishing, and the upper, the middle, and the artizan classes—the beef and mutton eating sections of society—are rapidly increasing. It is clear, then, that we are threatened with a revival of the pastoral age, and that in one way, at least, we are returning to the condition of our ancestors, whose staple food consisted of beef, mutton, and pork.

And here two questions arise. How long shall we be able to supply the increasing demand for meat? How long shall we be able to compete with the foreign feeders? These are momentous queries for the British farmer, and I trust they may be solved in a satisfactory manner. At any time during the present century the foreign or colonial grower of wheat could have undersold the British producer of that article, were the latter not protected by a tariff; but cattle could not, as a general rule, be imported into Great Britain at a cheaper rate than they could be produced at home. Were there no corn imported, it is certain that the price of bread would be greater than it is now, even if the grain harvests had been better than they have been for some years past. A bad cereal harvest in England raises the price of flour, but only to a small and strictly limited extent, because, practically, there is no limit to the amount of bread-stuffs procurable from abroad. When, on the contrary, the turnip crop fails, or that excessive drought greatly curtails the yield of grass, the price of meat and butter increases greatly, and is but slightly modified by the importation of foreign stock.

Hitherto the difficulty of transit has been so great that we have only derived supplies of live stock from countries situated at a short distance, such as Holstein and Holland. Vast herds of cattle are fed with but little expense in America, and myriads of sheep are maintained cheaply in Australia; but the immense distances which intervene between our country and those remote and sparsely populated regions have, hitherto, prevented the superabundant supply of animal food produced therein from being available to the teeming population of the British Isles. Should, however, any cheap mode of conveying live stock, or even their flesh, from those and similarly circumstanced countries be devised, it might render the production of meat in Britain a far less profitable occupation than it is now. That we are increasing the area from whence we draw our supplies of live stock is evident from the fact, that within the last two years enormous numbers of horned stock have been imported from Spain. In that extensive country there are noble breeds of the ox; and it would appear that very large numbers of animals could be annually exported, without depriving the inhabitants of a due supply of bovine meat. As Spain is not very distant, it is likely that this traffic will be increased, and that in a short time we shall be as well supplied with Spanish beef as we are now provided with French flour. Meat is at present dear, and is likely to continue so for some time; but still it is evident that, sooner or later, the British feeders will come into keen competition with the foreign producer of meat, and that the price of their commodity will consequently fall. The mere probability of such a state of things, were there no other reason, should induce the feeder to devote increased attention to the improvement of his stock, and to discover more economical methods of feeding them. There is still much to be learned relative to the precise nutritive values of the various feeding stuffs. The proper modes of cooking, or otherwise preparing, food, are still to be satisfactorily determined; and there are many very important questions in relation to the breeding of stock yet unanswered.

It is but fair to admit that the farmer is earnestly endeavouring to improve his art, and that he is willing, nay anxious, to obtain the co-operation of scientific men, in order to increase his knowledge of the theory as well as the practice of his ancient calling. Indeed, he not only admits the utility of science in agriculture, but often places an undue degree of value upon the theories of the chemist, of the botanist, and of the geologist. This is encouraging to the men of science; but, on the other hand, they must admit that by far the greater portion of the sum of human knowledge has been derived from the experience and observation of men utterly unacquainted with science, in the ordinary signification of that term. This portion of our knowledge is also, in its practical application, the most valuable. In the most important branch of industry—agriculture—the labors of the purely scientific man have as yet borne but scant fruit; whilst the unaided efforts of the husbandman have reclaimed from sterility extensive tracts, and caused them to blossom as the rose. That practical men should have done so much, and scientific men so little, for agriculture, may easily be explained. Countless millions of men, during many thousands of years, have incessantly been occupied in improving the processes of mechanical agriculture, which, as an art, has consequently been brought to a high degree of perfection: but scientific agriculture is a creation of almost our own time, and the number of its cultivators is, and always has been, very small; all its theories cannot, therefore, justly claim that degree of confidence which, as a rule, is only reposed in the opinions founded on the experience of practical workers in the field and in the feeding-house. Still, the farmer has derived a great amount of useful information from the chemist and physiologist; and they alone can explain to him the causes of the various phenomena which the different branches of his art present. There was a time when it was the fashion of the man of science to look down with contempt, from the lofty pedestal on which he placed himself, upon the lessons of practical experience read to him by the cultivator of the soil; whilst at the same time the farmer treated as foolish visionaries those who applied the teachings of science to the improvement of their art. But this time has happily passed away. The scientific man no longer despises the knowledge of the mere farmers, but turns to good account the information derivable from their experience; whilst the farmer, on the other side, has ceased to speak in contemptuous terms of mere book learning. It is to this happy combination of the theorist with the practical man that the recent remarkable advance in agriculture is chiefly due; and to it we may confidently look for improvement in the economic production of meat and butter, and for the enlargement of our knowledge of the relative value of food substances.

I am indebted to Professor Ferguson, Chief of the Veterinary Department of the Irish Privy Council Office, for the following statement:—

PART I.

ON THE GROWTH AND COMPOSITION OF ANIMALS.

SECTION I.

ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE LIFE.

Functions of Plants.—It is the primary function of plants to convert the inorganic matter of the soil and air into organised structures of a highly complex nature. The food of plants is purely mineral, and consists chiefly of water, carbonic acid, and ammonia. Water is composed of the elements oxygen and hydrogen; carbonic acid is a compound of oxygen and carbon; and ammonia is formed of hydrogen and nitrogen. These four substances are termed the organic elements, because they form by far the larger portion—sometimes the whole—of organic bodies. The combustible portion of plants and animals is composed of the organic elements; the incombustible part is made up of potassium, sodium, and the various other elements enumerated in another page. The organic elements are furnished chiefly by the atmosphere, and the incombustible matters are supplied by the soil.

Water in the state of vapor forms, according to the temperature and other conditions of the atmosphere, from a half per cent. to four and a half per cent. of the weight of that fluid—about 1·25 per cent. being the average; carbonic acid exists in it to the extent of ¹⁄2000th; and ammonia forms a minute portion of it—according to Dr. Angus Smith, one grain weight in 412·42 cubic feet of air (of a town), or 0·000453 per cent. It is remarkable that the most abundant constituents of atmospheric air—oxygen and nitrogen—are not assimilable by plants, although these elements enter largely into the composition of vegetable substances. In the soil, also, the part which ministers to the wants of vegetables is relatively quite insignificant in amount.

Plants are unendowed with organs of locomotion, their food must therefore be within easy reach. Every breeze wafts gaseous nutriment to their expanded leaves, and their rootlets ramify throughout the soil in search of appropriate mineral aliment. But no matter how abundant, or however easy of reach may be the food of plants, the vegetable organism is incapable of partaking of it unless under the influence of light. Exposed to this potent stimulus, the plant collects the gaseous carbonic acid and the vaporous water, solidifies them, decomposes them, and combines their elements into new and organised forms. In effecting these changes—in conferring vitality upon the atoms of lifeless matter—the plant acts merely as the mechanism, the light is the force. As the work performed by the steam-engine is proportionate to the amount of force developed by the combustion of the fuel beneath its boiler, so is the rapidity of the elaboration of organic substances by plants proportionate to the amount of sunlight to which they are exposed. It is an axiom that matter is indestructible; we may alter its form as often as we please, but we cannot destroy a particle of it. It is the same with force: we may convert one kind of it into another—heat into light, or magnetism into electricity—but our power ends there; we can only cause force, or motion, to pass from one of its conditions to another, but its quantity can never be diminished by the power of man.

The principle of the Conservation of the Forces gives us a clear explanation of the fact that animals can obtain their food only through the medium of the vegetable kingdom. Plants are stationary mechanisms; they have no need to develop motive power, as animals have, in moving themselves from place to place. Their temperature is, we may say, the same as that of the medium in which they exist. Such beings as plants do not, therefore, require the expenditure of force to maintain their vitality; on the contrary, their mechanisms are, for a beneficent purpose, constructed for the accumulation of force. The growing plant absorbs, together with carbonic acid, water, and ammonia, a proportionate amount of light, heat, and the various other subtile forces which have their abiding place in the sun-beam—

"That golden chain,

Whose strong embrace holds heaven and earth and main."

Co-incidentally with the conversion of the mineral constituents of the food of plants into organised structures—albumen, fibre, and such like substances—the light, and the heat, and the various other forces likewise suffer a change. Although the precise nature of the new force into which they are converted is still a mystery—one, too, which may never be revealed to us—still we know sufficient of it to satisfy us that it can only exist in connection with organic or organised structures. It is owing to its presence that the elements of these structures (the natural state of which is mineral) are bound together in what may be aptly designated a constrained state; or, as Liebig aptly expresses it, like the matter in a bent spring. So long as the organic structure retains its form, it will be a reservoir of latent force—which will manifest itself in some form during the recoil of the atoms of the matter forming the structure to their original mineral, or statical condition: so the bent spring, when the pressure is removed, returns to its original straight form.

Animal Life.—The chief manifestation of the life of a plant is the accumulation of force; very different are the functions of animal life. It is only by the continuous expenditure of force that the vitality of animals is preserved; the heat of a man's body, his power of locomotion, the performance of his daily toil, even his very faculty of thought, are all dependent upon, and to a great extent proportionate to, the amount of organised matter disorganised in his body. It is by the conversion of this organised matter into its original mineral state of water, carbonic acid, and ammonia, that the force originally expended in arranging, through the agency of plants, its atoms, is again restored, chiefly in the form of heat and animal motive power.

Animals, as a class, are completely dependent upon vegetables for their existence. There is every reason to believe that the most lowly organised beings in the scale of animal life, even those of so simple a structure as to have been long regarded as vegetables or as plant-animals, are incapable of organising mineral matter. The so-called vegetative life of animals—for I