ECONOMICAL FEEDING.

Clutha Leader, Volume I, Issue 1, 9 July 1874, Page 4

ECONOMICAL FEEDING.

Economy in "fee-Hrg consists not in the quantity of food consumed but in the. amount digested. The more we can iudnce an ai iroal to eat and completely assimilate the greater is the profit. The food must not only be rendered palatable, but it must be fed in such a condition that the lea*«t amount of labor is necessary to prepare it for digestion. The - Irish Farmer's Gazettte' describes a, method of feeding cattle which combines many excellent points. The materials are roots, hay, and meal. The prepa»ation is by pulping the roots, chaffing the hay, crushing the grain, arid steaming the whole together. By two months of, such feeding cat'le a r e male to increase in weight as much 8-« by four months with unprepared food For a hundred head of cattJe a six- horse power en gine is required, a root pulper, a chaffcutter, and a steaming apparatus. The pulper is able to reduce a ton of roots into minute fragments in six minutes. The t-haff cuifrr will reduce a ton ot hay in an hour into chaff ot half an inch in length. Tbe pulping and chaffing is done upon a floor or platform «ibove the feed box. Tr*e root 9 aTe fed to the pulper from a floor above it, from which they are shovel d into the hopper with great rapidity. When steaming is pracMstd the feed i** mixed i*> the proportion of one pound of hay to 14 ■pmndsof roofs; 112 pounds of tbi-i mix ture wi*h four prunrfs of meal is sufficient for the daily rations of a fattening bea*t along with a modicum of dry hsy or s-raw as au app;tizer or in the way of -ac*~an-;e The required qu -ntity is mixed ar.d tl rown into a steam tight vat which is covered, and the steam : s then turned o-> for 30 minutes. It is then cooked, and hy and by it is emptied in'o a cooling vat where it is reduced to blood heat ; then it is fed to the animal?, and they eat it wi*h avidity. Wfen not steamed the mixed food is heaped upon the floor, where it remains two or three hours before being fed. In this period it ferments and heats aud undergoes a change somewhat an&lagous to cooking, by which it ia reGdered readily digestible.