FEEDING FARM STOCK

Hawera Star, Volume L, 20 December 1930, Page 7

FEEDING FARM STOCK

EFFECTS UJ-'. PRODUCTION. . Jf cattle are to produce much milk or to fatten very quickly they must c muime and digest large quantities of loud and since the amount they ran laid at any one time' is ultimately limited by the size of their digestive organs these organs must be big and the ration must contain much nutriment in " small space. The latter requirement is achieved to a large extent, and it is '■'ell known that high 'production demands the use of concentrated food, l ;it. even with much of this it is difficnlt to get an eeonomioal and suitable ration containing enough starch equivalent and yet with the animal’s capacity. One way of increasing capacity would appear to lie in keeping the animel well filled for .as great a part ot the day as possible, by feeding “little and often.” and, this lias been strongly recommended in recent years. Another way of increasing consumption is by speeding up the rate of passage of the food through the animal. and some foods have an especial value because they are helpful in this direction. Succulent food lias been shown to pass more quickly through the first two stomachs of the ruminant than dry foods and to ferment more quickly: laxative foods are particularly useful in the case of high-yielding cows, which should always be kept in -a moderately loose condition. The speeding up of the rate of passage of the food, like everything else, can be overdone, for if it is too quick the absorption of the nutrients from the food mass will he incomplete. Bulky food, is in general, .slow ill passing through the body, so that it is a. good practice to feed it at night, when it will pass slowly on without hindering the digestion of quicker more concentrated foods. Succulent food, it will be realised, can only be regarded as bulky

if the starch equivalent of its dry matter is low, which is not usually the case, for its apparent bulk consists of water and the dry foods will take this up immediately on arrival in the stomach. Indeed it may well be that the fact that succulent foods are already “saturated” with water, with the consequent effect on the chemical form of their nutrients, explains their relative rapidity of digestion.