The Stock-Feeder's Manual the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and feeding of live stock

SECTION I. ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE LIFE. Functions of Plants. Animal Life.--SECTION II. COMPOSITION OF ORGANIC SUBSTANCES. Elements of Organic Bodies. Proximate Composition of Organic Substances.--SECTION III. USE OF FAT IN THE ANIMAL ECONOMY. Fatty Food necessary in Cold Climates. Fat Equivalents.--SECTION IV. RELATION BETWEEN THE COMPOSITION OF AN ANIMAL AND THAT OF ITS FOOD. Tables of Experimental Results.--SECTION V. RELATION BETWEEN THE QUANTITY OF FOOD CONSUMED BY AN ANIMAL AND THE INCREASE OF ITS WEIGHT, OR OF THE AMOUNT OF ITS WORK. Weights of Foods necessary to sustain a Man's Life for twenty-four hours. Value of Manure.

SECTION I. THE BREEDING OF STOCK.--SECTION II. THE BREEDS OF STOCK. The Form of Animals. Breeds of the Ox. Shorthorns. Devons. Herefords. Ayrshires. Polled Cattle. Kyloes. Long-horned. Kerrys. Alderneys. Sheep. The Leicester. Lincoln. Cotswold. Cheviot. Southdown. Shropshire. Blackfaced. Breeds of the Pig. Berkshire. Yorkshire. Breeds of the Horse. Clydesdales. Suffolk Punch. Hunters and Racers.

SECTION I. THE OX. Breeding Cows. Wintering of Young Stock. Shelter of Stock. Milch Cows. Stall Feeding. Cost of Maintaining Animals. Cooking and Bruising Food. Value for Feeding Purposes of various Foods. Bedding Cattle.--SECTION II. THE SHEEP. Breeding Ewes. Yeaning. Rearing of Lambs. Sheep Feeding. Sheep Dips.--SECTION III. THE PIG. Young Pigs. Store Pigs. Fattening Pigs.--SECTION IV. THE HORSE. Foals. Dietaries for the Horse.

SECTION I. MEAT. Quality of Meat. Is very Fat Meat Unwholesome? Diseased Meat.--SECTION II. MILK. Composition of Milk of Different Animals. Yield of Milk. Preserved Milk.--SECTION III. BUTTER. History of Butter. Irish Butter. Composition of Butter. The Butter Manufacture.

SECTION I. THE MONEY VALUE OF FOOD SUBSTANCES.--SECTION II. PROXIMATE CONSTITUENTS OF VEGETABLES. Starch. Sugar. Inulin. Gum. Pectin. Cellulose. Oils and Fats. Stearin. Margarin. Olein. Palmitin. Albumen. Fibrin. Legumin.--SECTION III. GREEN FOOD. The Grasses. Schroeder Brome. Tussac Grass. The Clovers. Leguminous Plants--Vetch, Sainfoin, &c. The Yellow Lupine. Rib Grass Plantain. Ergot in Grasses. Holcus Saccharatus. Green Rye. Buckwheat. Rape. Mustard. Comfrey. Chicory. Yarrow. Melons and Marrows. Cabbage. Furze.--SECTION IV. STRAW AND HAY. Straw. Anderson's, Voelcker's, and Cameron's Analyses of Straws. Feeding Experiments with Straw. Relative Values of Straw and Oil-cake. Hay. Composition of the Hay of different Grasses. Over-ripening of Hay. Damaged Hay and Straw.--SECTION V. ROOTS AND TUBERS. Turnips. Swedish. White Globe. Aberdeen Yellow. Purple-top. Norfolk Bell. Greystone. Turnip Tops. Analyses of Turnips. Mangel Wurtzel. Chemistry of the Mangel. Stripping Leaves off the Mangel. Beet-root. Parsnip. Carrot. Kohl-rabi. Analyses of Kohl-rabi. Radish. The Radish as a Field Crop. Composition of Radish. Jerusalem Artichoke: Advantages of Cultivating it. Analysis of Jerusalem Artichoke. Potato: Analyses of six varieties. Feeding Value of Potatoes.--SECTION VI. SEEDS. Wheat. Analyses of Wheat, Flour, Bran, and Husks. Over-ripening of Grain. Wheat a Costly Food. Analyses of Barley, Oat Grain, Indian Corn, Rye, Rice, Rice-dust, and Buckwheat. Malted Corn. Voelcker's Analyses of Malt and Barley. Experiments of Thompson, Lawes, &c., with Malt. Malt Combings. Leguminous Seeds. Beans. Composition of Common Beans, Foreign Beans, Peas. Lentils and Winter Tares. Oil Seeds. Rape Seeds. Experiments with Rapeseed. Flax Bolls. Composition of Linseed, Rape-seed, Hemp-seed, and Cotton-seed. Fenugreek Seed.--SECTION VII. OIL-CAKES AND OTHER ARTIFICIAL FOODS. Composition of Linseed, Rape-seed, Cotton-seed, and Poppy-seed Cake. Linseed-cake. Adulteration of Linseed-cake. Rape-cake. Feeding Experiments with Rape-cake. Adulterations of Rape-cake. Cotton-seed Cake. Analyses of Decorticated Cotton-seed Cake. Palm-nut Meal: its Composition and Nutritive Properties. Locust, or Carob Bean: its Composition. Dates. Brewers' Dregs and Distillery Wash. Molasses and Treacle.--SECTION VIII. CONDIMENTAL FOOD. Lawes' Experiments with Thorley's Food. Analyses of Condimental Food. Formula for a Tonic Food.--SECTION IX. TABLES OF THE ANALYSES OF THE ASHES OF PLANTS.

APPENDIX. AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS. Numbers of Live Stock in the United Kingdom. Value of the Agriculture Products of Great Britain.

When Virgil composed his immortal "Bucolics," and Varro indited his profound Essays on Agriculture, the inhabitants of the British Islands were almost completely ignorant of the art of cultivating the soil. The rude spoils torn from the carcasses of savage animals protected the bodies of their hardly less savage victors; and the produce of the chase served almost exclusively to nourish the hardy frames of the ancient Celtic hunters. In early ages wild beasts abounded in the numerous and extensive forests of Britain and Ireland; but men were few, for the conditions under which the maintenance of a dense population is possible did not then exist. As civilisation progressed, men rapidly multiplied, and the demand for food increased. The pursuit of game became merely the pastime of the rich; and tame sheep and oxen furnished meat to the lowly as well as to the great. Nor were the fruits of the earth neglected; for during the latter days of the dominion of the Romans, England raised large quantities of corn. Gradually the food of the people, which at first was almost purely animal, became chiefly vegetable. The shepherds, who had supplanted the hunters, became less numerous than the tillers of land; and the era of tillage husbandry began.

At present the great mass of the rural population of these countries subsist almost exclusively upon vegetable aliment--a diet which poverty, and not inclination, prescribes for them. Were the flesh of animals the staple food of the British peasantry, their numbers would not be nearly so large as they now are, for a given area of land is capable of sustaining a far larger number of vegetarians than of meat eaters. The Chinese are by no means averse to animal food, but they are so numerous, that they are in general obliged to content themselves on a purely vegetable diet.

In the manufacturing districts of Great Britain, there are several millions of people whose condition in relation to food is somewhat different from that of the small farmer and agricultural laborer. The artizans employed in our great industries are comparatively well paid for their toil; and the results of their labor place within their reach a fair share of animal food. This section of the population is rapidly increasing, and consequently is daily augmenting the demand for meat. The rural population is certainly not increasing; rather the reverse. Less manual labor is now expended in the operations of agriculture, and even horses are retiring before the advance of the steam plough. The only great purely vegetable-feeding class is diminishing, and the upper, the middle, and the artizan classes--the beef and mutton eating sections of society--are rapidly increasing. It is clear, then, that we are threatened with a revival of the pastoral age, and that in one way, at least, we are returning to the condition of our ancestors, whose staple food consisted of beef, mutton, and pork.

And here two questions arise. How long shall we be able to supply the increasing demand for meat? How long shall we be able to compete with the foreign feeders? These are momentous queries for the British farmer, and I trust they may be solved in a satisfactory manner. At any time during the present century the foreign or colonial grower of wheat could have undersold the British producer of that article, were the latter not protected by a tariff; but cattle could not, as a general rule, be imported into Great Britain at a cheaper rate than they could be produced at home. Were there no corn imported, it is certain that the price of bread would be greater than it is now, even if the grain harvests had been better than they have been for some years past. A bad cereal harvest in England raises the price of flour, but only to a small and strictly limited extent, because, practically, there is no limit to the amount of bread-stuffs procurable from abroad. When, on the contrary, the turnip crop fails, or that excessive drought greatly curtails the yield of grass, the price of meat and butter increases greatly, and is but slightly modified by the importation of foreign stock.

Hitherto the difficulty of transit has been so great that we have only derived supplies of live stock from countries situated at a short distance, such as Holstein and Holland. Vast herds of cattle are fed with but little expense in America, and myriads of sheep are maintained cheaply in Australia; but the immense distances which intervene between our country and those remote and sparsely populated regions have, hitherto, prevented the superabundant supply of animal food produced therein from being available to the teeming population of the British Isles. Should, however, any cheap mode of conveying live stock, or even their flesh, from those and similarly circumstanced countries be devised, it might render the production of meat in Britain a far less profitable occupation than it is now. That we are increasing the area from whence we draw our supplies of live stock is evident from the fact, that within the last two years enormous numbers of horned stock have been imported from Spain. In that extensive country there are noble breeds of the ox; and it would appear that very large numbers of animals could be annually exported, without depriving the inhabitants of a due supply of bovine meat. As Spain is not very distant, it is likely that this traffic will be increased, and that in a short time we shall be as well supplied with Spanish beef as we are now provided with French flour. Meat is at present dear, and is likely to continue so for some time; but still it is evident that, sooner or later, the British feeders will come into keen competition with the foreign producer of meat, and that the price of their commodity will consequently fall. The mere probability of such a state of things, were there no other reason, should induce the feeder to devote increased attention to the improvement of his stock, and to discover more economical methods of feeding them. There is still much to be learned relative to the precise nutritive values of the various feeding stuffs. The proper modes of cooking, or otherwise preparing, food, are still to be satisfactorily determined; and there are many very important questions in relation to the breeding of stock yet unanswered.