Just as the feeding of the soil has been concentrated on purely chemical needs and the measurement of soil nutrition has stopped at N.P. and K., so the feeding of farm animals has been limited to the provision of starch equivalent and protein equivalent. In recent years some attention has been given to mineral needs in animal nutrition and some vague acknowledgment of trace elements is now accepted. But these latter developments have been based mainly on the commercial possibilities of synthetic mineral supplements. No organized attempt has been made to investigate ways of ensuring the complete nutrition of the animal through the growing crop.
The whole point of my practice and advocacy of natural or bulk feeding (roughage or forage feeding are alternative descriptions of the system) is the sheer necessity of such a system of feeding to the complete nutrition and health of the animal.
Starch equivalent and protein equivalent fed in at one end of a cow will produce milk at the other end. But the man who discovered this fact forgot about the cow in the middle, between the starch and protein equivalent and the milk. He forgot that she too has to operate a complex and delicate system which processes the starch equivalent and protein equivalent into milk; to build a young animal inside her, and to maintain her own health. None of these things are automatic unless nutrition is complete to the last minute trace of some obscure element, or a tiny proportion of one of a long list of vitamins or many other prerequisites of glandular or bacterial functioning in the animal system, about which official research has hardly begun to consider.
Take the simple example of vitamins. Human health is considered impossible without an adequate supply of vitamins. We are advised to take vitamin pills in the winter when our summer sun has been inadequate, or the amount of fresh fruit and vegetables may be small. If we don't get enough vitamins from food or sun, these vitamin supplements are considered essential to continuing health. Yet the poor old cow is asked to produce, from her bodily reserves, a calf and a thousand gallons of milk without a thought for her vitamin needs, on a diet which her stomachs were never designed to digest—and which in consequence calls for a complete reorganization of her digestive processes.
The ruminant stomachs were designed to deal with coarse roughage. Nothing more concentrated than spring grass and its natural admixture of herbs was ever intended to pass to the inside of a cow. And nature provided in the stomach and intestines a group of bacteria whose task it was to break down this fibrous food into the requirements of lactation and pregnancy.
The continued passage of this natural food through the stomachs and alimentary canal, fostered and at the same time encouraged the right bacterial flora. The vitamins, in which such a diet was rich, maintained a healthy and vigorous system; and the plant hormones present in fresh whole food—the precursors of glandular functions in the body—maintained the harmony and balanced functioning of all the organs of the animal system.
In addition to the vitamins and hormones in right proportions and adequate quantities, the deep roots of the natural herbage of the woodlands, fields and hedgerows, tapped the soil at all levels from the top soil to many feet down in the subsoil and rock, to provide a vast complex of minerals and trace elements, all of which, in however microscopic a quantity, are imperative parts of perfect metabolism and complete nutrition.
It is obvious then, that any efficient attempt to maintain the animal in health, as well as profitable production, must provide all these essentials of complete nutrition, and probably many other factors still not discovered or isolated from the natural diet. No man would suggest to-day that we know everything that exists in the complete diet of the animal. It is in the lifetime of most adult readers of this book that three of the most important factors in the diet of human or animal were discovered. Fifty years ago it was believed that carbohydrates, proteins and fats were the only constituents of our food; and animal nutrition has rested ever since on those requirements (with vague suggestions for the addition of synthetic minerals). But who would be bold enough, even now that we have discovered vitamins, trace-elements, hormones, digestive enzymes and bacteria, to suggest that nothing remains to be discovered about the science of nutrition?
And since no mere man can begin accurately to estimate the correct ratio or relationship in which the animal needs, or can assimilate, all these known essentials, let alone the still undiscovered elements or organisms, there is only one way of ensuring complete nutrition; and that is to provide the bulk of the diet in natural form.
I believe the herbal ley conies as near as it is possible to get to the natural diet, in a form which produces maximum milk or meat production from every acre while at the same time maintaining health and low production costs.
In addition to providing what I believe to be the perfect basic diet for economical and healthful milk production, it does it at a lower cost in labour and machinery for both harvesting and feeding it, than any other system I know. And, what is more, once the ley is established and is available for grazing or cutting for silage, it provides the most foolproof system of feeding that can be devised. No exact measurement of starch equivalent and protein equivalent, or pounds per gallon, or maintenance and production ration, is necessary. The orthodox books on animal nutrition, certainly the sections of them referring to cows, may be forgotten. With the publication of Fertility Pastures I believe that they are out of date. The high costs for purchased feeding-stuffs, the balancing of home-grown production rations, the labour of feeding them to housed cattle and adjusting the varying proportions of concentrates, hay, silage and/or roots, can no longer be tolerated, at present milk prices, by the farmer who farms for a living. Let the hobby farmer continue mopping up his business profits—though there are easier ways of doing even that than carrying food to cows which have twice as many legs as the man who carries her food. There is little scope for cutting costs, except in the cost of feeding: for labour costs are more likely to rise than fall, and there is a limit, which is very nearly reached in the most progressive herds, to the forcing of the cow to ever higher and higher yields. The suggestion by the on-to-the-3,000-gallon-herd-average boys, that there is no limit to the amount of milk a cow can be bred and fed to yield, will not be accepted by intelligent farmers, unless their striving for the carrot dangling before them causes them to miss the opportunities of profitable milk production by natural methods, which this book lays at their feet.
My feeding methods, then, are simply to allow the cow to help herself to as much as she wants of well-controlled herbal leys in the months of March or April till October or November; and for the months of November to March to allow her as much as she cares to take of silage made from the same leys. In addition we allow some kale, controlled by electric fence, to be grazed in the winter months; and a handful or two of ground dredge corn to be given to the higher yielding cows during milking. Some good oat straw was provided, as litter around the silage heap and in the lie-back pasture to raise the dry roughage content of the diet and assist cudding, in our first year of all-silage feeding; but last winter, after a harvest which left us short of good feeding straw, we fed none, and the cows did, if anything, rather better on silage and kale only.
Provision needs to be made each year for about 6-8 tons of silage per cow according to breed, 10 cwt. of dredge corn (mixed cereals and pulses), and 1/4 acre of late-sown leafy kale for each cow which is to be in milk in the winter period. The dredge corn is not an essential—a 750 gallon herd average (with Jerseys) can be maintained entirely on silage and grass. While we need to use a little straw we also grow a little dredge corn, and feeding the ground dredge corn will maintain an 850-950 gallon herd average.
For summer grazing on the good, well-managed ley, approximately 1 acre per cow should be needed. Last year my herd of Jerseys was unable to keep down half an acre for each cow. If the soil is not so good and the ley is not likely to achieve maximum production, start with 1-1/2 to 2 acres of ley for each cow and use the surplus for silage. The grazing acreage can always be reduced as fertility builds up and the yield of the ley increases.
NEXT