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Manawatu Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3595, 7 November 1905, Page 4

UNKNOWN

They Should «<* 'mV«n n* Much Pood &)* Viicy Will Eat. There is a widespread popular prejudice against cow beef, and we suspect that the doctors are very largely responsible for it. Yet wc have so often eaten tender and sweet cow beef that our experience long ago taught us that its quality was much more dependent on the way it had been fattened than it was on the age of the cow. But it is nevertheless true, says American Cultivator, that it is more difficult to fat- ■ ten an old cow, or an old animal of any kind, than it is to fatten young animals. ■ As the teeth begin to fail, the. food is < not so well masticated as it used to be, and as a consequence digestion is rc.arded. The presence of undigested food in the stomach creates fever, and in this diseased condition not only does i the animal fatten less rapidly, but what He ah it puts on is less tender and sweet than it. should be. The common practice of fattening cows with corn, and milking them so long as they can be milked, helps to make poor beef. The water and fat that go Into the milk are both much needed in the beef to make it as good as it should be. A cow properly fattened should be given as much succulent food as she wall eat, and at first be fed with bran or meal rather sparingly. If she is very thin in tlesh her beef may be made,all the better, provided this condition does not show the impairment of her digestive organs. When a cow is fattened that when you begin feeding her is little more than skin and bones, with enough flesh to hold them together, it stands to reason that most of the tlesh and fat you can put on her by three or four months good feeding will bt new flesh and fat, and just as good as if put on a two-year-old heifer. The bodily system is being constantly changed by the small veins which run through the flesh, and which arcalways carrying off waste matter, and replacing it with new. The old saying used to be that the living body is wholly renewed every seven years. But scientists are now agreed that most parts of it are renewed much quicker than this, as anyone may see by the rapid healing of a cut or bruise when air and the germs it contains are excluded from it.