ABUSE OF FEED.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2295, 26 March 1887, Page 2

ABUSE OF FEED.

Sir J. B. Lawes says in the "Agricultural Gazette" that he could not desire a better illustration of the abuse of food than that of feeding a cow which was yielding milk, with mangels. Milk is a highly nitrogenous substance, while mangels, though they contain a large amount of food in sugar, have a low percentage of nitrogen, and a considerable proportion of what they do not possess is incapable of producing the nitrogenous compound which we find in milk. How, then, is milk to be obtained from mangels ? The cow would for a time furnish the necessary nitrogenous compounds from her own body, but at the same time would be losing condition. Bran, Lawes, says very closely resembles milk as regard the relation of'its nitrogenous and non-nitrogenous matters, but bran and mangels diifer very much in the respective amount they contain of these substances. A similar abuse often occurs when too many roots are given to the ewes. A lamb, which when born is little more than a lump of nitrogen and phosphates, is expected to be formed from a food which is exceedingly poor in both these substances, and then, when wholesale abortion is the result, it is that the manure which grew the roots is to blame. That of roots is greatly dependent upon the manures embut no matter how they are grown, roots, ployed to grow them, Sir. J. B. Lawes admits, when used alone, cannot be considered a milk-producing food.