SALT FOR DAIRY COWS.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 15908, 21 August 1923, Page 8

SALT FOR DAIRY COWS.

EFFECT ON MILK. Just suppose you sit down to dine (says George Leslie in the Friesian Breeder”) with some rare roast beet, baked potatoes and a salad on the table Y,ou taste the beef and potatoes, and find them flat on your palate,, and automatically reach for Lie salt shaker, expecting to find it m its accustomed place on your right hand. It isn’t there, and inquiry el- - the information that the cook had already salted the dinner and you are to eat it “as it is. r, saj your first mouthful of beef is much too salt for your taste. Are you going to enjoy it, or eat it at all? You are not.

This being so, why not give your dairy cattle the same choice as to seasoning tlieir daily ration? If . a mixed commercial grain is being used in your barn, there will be onetenth or one-quarter of 1 per cent, of salt in it according to the manufacturer’s idea of what is needed, which means that in a hundred pound bag of grain there is from 1 3 -sth oz to .4 oz of salt. When that bag of grain is fed to eight to ten cows in an ordinary dairy herd, what can the individual cow get as seasoning for her ration? About what you got in your flat dinner and she cannot lay down the law to get a salt shaker when she wants it, as you can. If the grain is salted in the barn, a lot of salt may get in one cow’s grain and less in others, and none at all in some of it. In fact, it is not the best practice to salt the cow’s feed. Put a smooth salt brick where she may help herself. She will take it or leave it according to the requirements of her system just as you wish to do and insist on doing when getting your own “threesquares” - day. As the content of salt varies in soils and in water, both in wells and in streams, neither dry nor green roughages nor drinking water is always the same so far as this most necessary mineral constituent is concerned. Aside from the question of pleasing the palate, the cow must have salt in varying amounts, as has been proved (if indeed it needed proof) by experimental work. Work done at the Wisconsin Experimental Station showed that a dairy cow needed 3 oz of salt per day for 1000 lb of body weight, and 2-3rd oz for every 201 bof milk she made, as an average requirement.

An adequate allowance of salt means that the cow will—if she can get it—drink plenty of water, and that has its direct influence on milk production. This was brought directly to our attention a few weeks ago. A man who had been milking cows for at least twenty years had been getting poor prpduction, and did not know where to look for improvement. He was discussing the matter with a man who had advised a change of grain to tempt their appetite. “At the same time,” said he, “I’d give them a good lot of salt in the grain—mix it so they’ll have to eat it. I think they need it as their coats don’t look good to me.” This advice was followed, a lot of salt was given the cows in the new feed and up came the production, a whole 40 quart can a day for the herd. Fine and dandy! This lasted for a few weeks, but gradually the cows came back down to the lew production, on exactly the same feed.