NEW STOCK FOOD.

Waikato Times, Volume 105, Issue 17750, 29 June 1929, Page 11

NEW STOCK FOOD.

FLESH-FORMING DIET. MEAL FROM ENTRAILS. LINCOLN COLLEGE EXPERIMENTS. A new stock food has appeared on the market which promises to have a revolutionary effect, particularly in pigrearing. It is known as meat meal, and is made from the entrails of animals killed at freezing works- The process of manufacture is simple, the entrails being dried and ground into a powder. Extensive experiments have been made with this food at Lincoln College, and some interesting data has been compiled by Mr M. J. Scott, chemist and lecturer on animal nutriment at the college. Mr Scott was in Hamilton yesterday, and discussing the experiments with a Times representative, he said breeders of pigs had in the past relied on pollard and other grain meals, which were, however, too costly to be economical. Meat meal was valuable mainly for the flesh-forming material It contained. Half the value was lost of foods that were deficient in fleshforming material. The correct daily ration for. pigs has been found to be half a pound of meal fed with other foods. Served with mangolds it increases the value from 3s to 35s per ton, including the cost of the meat meal. It trebles the value of grass and increases the value of whey also by 50 per cent. Lincoln College has experimented with 1800 pigs in three years on farms around Canterbury and at the college under actual farming conditions. The data therefore is not haphazard. It has also been found that the milk production can be raised 40 per cent, by feeding meat meal mixed with a minimum quantity of chaff or hay for three months during the winter. It is also benellcial fed lightly to cattle in summer where grass food is scarce.

In Canterbury they have been feeding the meal to sheep, which have come out in the pink of condition- ■ The experiment has also proved very successful with calves. Starting with them when a week old, they were fed loz. of meal per day with whey, increased gradually until 6oz. were fed at eight weeks old. Calves so fed had shown remarkable growth, said Mr Scott, and it was necessary in such feeding to watch that it was not overdone.

At present this meat meal is being sold at £23 per ton, which Mr Scott regards aS excessive. It could, he says, be manufactured profitably by all meat works at £l3 10s per ton, at which price it would cost two-thirds of a penny a day to feed a pig. As it was possible to manufacture it at all meat works and the process was simple, the price should be the same in all parts of the Dominion. Entrails in the past have simply been utilised in a blood-and-bone mixture and sold at £l2 10s per ton.