Salt for Dairy Cows.

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2486, 16 June 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

Salt for Dairy Cows.

The Mark Lane Express states that Professor T. D. Curtis is a strong advocate for the liberal use of salt in the food of dairy stock, and has compiled a variety of testimony bearing on the subject. Amongst them we select the following :— The benefits of salt were not unknown to the ancients. Plinius wrote; "All live stock is incited to frequent the pastures through the eating of salt, giving more milk and finer cheese." Aud Virgil sang ■ "He who is a friend of milk and carries the rich clover and lotus, and also salted herbs, to the manger, on him smile

the swollen udders, and the milk shows, though veiled, the action of the salt." Prof. L. B. Arnold says : " Salt ought at all times to enter into the food of the dairy cow, and it should be kept whore she can partake of it ad libitum. Both tho quantity and the quality of the milk are considerably affected by withholding salt till the cows get hungry for it. Cows, in the season of lactation, require more salt than at other times, and those that give tho most milk requiro the most of it. In somo experiments in June, it was found that by lotting the cows go without salt for 5 daja they fell off iu their milk 2 per cenk. :a quantity and 7 per cent, in quality, inakiDg a lose of 0 per cent, on the cheese, which was at once restored by salt again." Again he snys :—" The percentage of salt in cow's milk is generally greater than the percentage of the salt in her food, and as a lurge and unnatural flow is induced by a long i.'ourso of artificial training, her food becomes ordinarily incapable of supplying her with the quantity required to perfect her milk." The commission of the French Government recommended 2oz. a day for a working ox or a milch cow. Dr. Phiprou, an English authority, says a milch cow require* 4oz. of salt a day. Prof. Goessmann sums up the whole question as follows : —" Salt does not increase directly tho live weight, yet it favours an eoonomioal digestion and assimilation of the requisite normal amount of food; and it

nllowß us, if desirable, to feed our stock high, without incurring , a particular corresponding risk. It enables us thus to shorten the time forgetting , our livestock

up to a desirable market value, and assists us, under certain circumstances, to dispose advantageously of a larger proportion of other farm products, as grain, hay, &c, in the form of live weight,"