FOOD AND FLESH.

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 311, 24 October 1929, Page 8

FOOD AND FLESH.

Tlie conversion of vegetable subone of the most interesting and cerstances into the structure of animals is often regarded as being something tainly not the least important of those regular and gradual operations in which the man on the land is engaged. It is to a certain extent the finishing point to all his labours. It must be admitted that the rearing and fattening of our domestic animals are too which everybody already knows all about. To this cause one can trace many of the failures which are met with. So far from being easily understood, the nutrition of stock is perhaps the most complicated of all problems associated with stock grazing, one in which those who seek to know the why and wherefore are as yet only groping ■ their way. A sufficient amount of research has been made into this subject to enable the intelligent grazier to understand and to prevent the evil consequences which follow up on the indiscriminate use of certain feed. In building up the structure of an animal it is necessary to bear in mind that the elements of which the food is composed are of two different classes —first, those containing nitrogen, which enters into the composition of bones, hair, horn, wool, skin, blood, and muscle or flesh, and secondly, those in which nitrogen does not exist and which are destined to support the respiration and animal heat as well as to produce fat. All the elements which produce the flesh and fat of animals are found to bo gathered in their food ready to be converted to their several uses without undergoing any* material change. Iu vegetable bodies we have vegetable al bunion, gluten, and casein, which are identical with fish, the curd of milk, and the blood. The phosphates, common salt, etc., which exist largely in the bones, muscles, blood and milk of ani mals exist also in plants, while the starch, gum, sugar and oil, which constitute fat and are the elements of respiration are likewise found ready formed in vegetables. The proportions in which these exist" vary in different classes of plants. Hence the different results which we eXperince from the use of different kinds of food. Grow ing animals require a different dietary from those which are fattening for the butcher. We wish to build up the bony structure, and to ensure a full musculai development in a growing animal. But in the case of an animal which is being topped off for the butcher, the dietary must consist not only of flesh-producing elements, but also of the fat-forming variety There must at all times be a proper mixture of the elements of nutrition and of/respiration. If an animal be fed exclusively on one description of food, one, for example, which contains merely the elements of nutrition, that animal will gradually lose condition and die, in consequecne of the absence of those elements which are necessary to maintain the temperature of the body and the production of fat. In like manner, an animal cannot exist on food such as starch, gum, or sugar, which consists merely of the elements of respiration, without any of the fleshforming principles.