Our Livestock — Cooperative Chemists
IN HIS STUDIES and world travels extending over twenty years or more and reported under the title 1 “The Origin of Species,” Sir Charles Darwin emphasized the many details by which each life form seemed to fit into the several supporting factors which characterized the environment. His studies prompted the lessening importance of the pedigree, however regal, and the increasing emphasis on environment, particularly the nutrition, as a factor determining the healthy survival of any species.
His publication, of more than a century ago, resulted from what one pair of eyes could see and one mind could organize about causes and effects. That memorable research occurred almost unaided by any of the techniques presently extending our visions of the animal physiology as that can be supported by the many crops which grow on the farm, or are available as feed (and medicine) in the market place. Darwin summed up, on a broad scale, the cause and effect relations between the soil that creates the plants and thereby the animals consuming them. Vice versa, there are also the effects of animal manures on the soils and the plants, as one of the cycles in Nature’s conservation. We are, but slowly, coming to recognize what Darwin called “The struggle to survive.” We need to appreciate that struggle, exhibited even by our animals under domestication and to recognize all that is included in his expression “The healthy survival of the fit.”
Age-old facts. The basic principles, according to which every kind of life today becomes fit and able to survive, are no different than those in control in Darwin’s time. Each kind, whether microbe, plant, animal or man must be nourished well enough, (a) to grow a healthy body; (b) to protect that from diseases as well as from predators; and (c) to reproduce its kind with prolificacy. Nourishment equal to that responsibility depends, in simplest consideration, on the fertility of the soil making up the environment of the species.
As livestock owners, we need to remind ourselves that during the past ages all wildlife has been searching out and balancing the items of its diets. Those include water, carbohydrates, proteins, inorganic essentials, various vitamins and possibly many other organic and inorganic essentials, yet unknown. That instinctive search by the individual has demonstrated a success in the health of the wildlife species which certainly transcends that allowed our hogs, for example, which Professor Loeffel of Nebraska College of Agriculture told us “bring in a new disease about every two years.”1
Accordingly, when the wild animals are such capable connoisseurs in feeding themselves for their good health; and when our domestic ones in reaching across, and then breaking through, the fence to get to feed on the grass on virgin soil along roads and railroads are telling us that they have not lost a similar instinct after centuries under domestication; should we not follow and pay tribute to the animal’s ability for assaying its own feeds? It was years ago when Professor John Evvard of Iowa paid his tribute to that rare ability of the hog when he said, “If you will give the pig a chance, it will make a hog of itself in less time than you will.”
Natural Laws. When the herds and flocks of the primitives and pioneers moved from good feed for themselves to more of it as chosen nutrition for their fitness to survive, their master followed their crooked pathways in his confidence and success of survival of himself and his family. He accepted their capabilities as biochemists (mainly ruminants) assaying the higher qualities of the crops established naturally by the balanced fertility of the soils to which the animals led him for the succession of harvests from seasons to seasons. He survived because of this animals as cooperative chemists whose judgements he accepted. History has some valuable lessons here.
A discussion of those lessons from livestock divides itself logically into four parts based on the following facts:
I. Our Domestic Animals, as Well as Wildlife, Are Struggling to Comply With the Evolutionary Laws Controlling Their Healthy Survival.
II. The Chemical Composition, i.e., The Nutritional Value, of Our Feedcrops and Products Therefrom. Varies According to the Balance and Inbalances of Their Plant Diets Available in the Fertility Elements and the Organic Matter of the Soils.
III. Feed Choices by the Animals Represent Their Reported Bioassays of the Effects by the Soil Fertility on the Nutritional Qualities Grown Into the Crop and Not on Its Yields per Acre.
IV. Animals Are Connoisseurs of Feeds for Their Health With Successes Transcending Those of the Laboratory Chemist, Prone to Emphasize “Crude” Protein.
If we are to “sell” our crops to our livestock for the price of their good health, must we not consider their choice for that result in which they have demonstrated so much more wisdom than we have?
I. Climatic Pattern of Differing Degrees by Which Rocks are Developed Into Soils Gives the Pattern of Animal Distribution
Cattle. The geographic location in good numbers of any particular animal species gives us also the location of soils growing feed crops which meet amply the animals’ nutritional requirements of proteins as well as of carbohydrates and other items of a good ration. Beef cattle production in the United States duplicates the geographic area where the American Bison was naturally most concentrated. That is the area along the longitudinal line between the soils of the Prairies and the Great Plains. That marks out their adherence to regions of virgin grasses, mainly the short ones.
But in terms of the soils creative potential for proteins, they were staying on those with annual rainfalls of near 25 inches. That is where the rocks and minerals have not been excessively developed as are those under higher rainfalls which produce scant protein but mainly carbohydrates as do soils growing forest crops. The climatic forces of 25 inches of rainfall have not depleted the soil of major available nutrient elements like calcium, magnesium, potassium and others. Instead, the soils still carry ample reserves of them in the pulverized rocks to be weathered sufficiently during the growing season. That mineral reserve is renewed periodically also by the dust storms. These make deposits on the soil’s surface of unweathered, well-mixed, silt minerals brought along by the Missouri River deposits in its winter-dried flood plains to be picked up there or from drier areas to the West.
Thus, the organic matter in the grassy sods is an effective weathering agent. By its decay, coupled with the mineral, or loessial, deposits on the land surface, there is the regular renewal of high-protein potential in the crops. While those effects may have been viewed as scant ones in forage yields per acre, the abundance of the crop yields is not the criterion of choice by the beasts which take to grass on naturally fertile, still highly-calcareous soils producing legumes abundantly among other native vegetation. It is on such soils, delineated by the buffalo, where our choice protein food of beef grows itself. Such was a Western cattleman’s implication when he said, “No we don’t grow beef cattle, we only count them.”
Pigs. While the area in the United States where beef grows is naturally to the west of the 98th meridian of longitude and under lower rainfalls, the area growing the pigs is to the east of that line and under higher precipitation. Our porkers mark out the more highly developed soils east of a line extending from the western edge of Minnesota to the southern tip of Texas. That line divides our “pedocal” soils (high in calcium or lime) from the “pedalfers” (high in acid-, aluminum-, and iron-clays).
Fig. 1. Losses of available nutrients (calcium, Ca; magnesium, Mg; potassium, K; ammonium, NH4; sodium, Na) and of total exchange capacity (T) with increasing development of a soil given sulfur (Schwefelmenge) as increasing tons per acre but decreasing pH values under high rainfall (leaching).
Even the first two units of sulfur brought about (a) losses of Ca-50%; Mg-70%; K-50%; NH4-40%; Na-60%; total exchange capacity-8%; and (b) increase of hydrogen (aluminum) saturation from 20 to 68 percent. Each vertical line, considered as the ratios of the vertical elements, shows the changes in those to each other, most markedly to the decreasing calcium and to the increasing acidity (hydrogen saturation), as the soil was more highly developed.
Fig. 2. The amounts of alfalfa hay consumed by the test-rabbits put the plots in the same order as in the preceding tests of choice amongst four alfalfa hay samples from different soil treatments. The gains in weight follow the amounts of hay consumed. There are the nearly constant ratios of hay taken to gains, even if in some cases the rabbits held consumption near saturation. Also, the ratio of corn to gain was higher as the quality of hay (by rabbit choice) was lower. The rabbits voted in opposition to the soil manager’s choices of soil treatments for bigger yields of alfalfa hay per acre. (Data from Mo. Agr. Expt. Station.)
Fig. 3. Test-rabbits, by the hays consumed, duplicated the order of their choices of the same hays according to soil treatments growing the red clover samples (Sanborn Field, 4-yr. rotation since 1888). The gains by the weanlings were closely related to the amounts of hay eaten. There was nearly a constant ratio between hay taken and resulting gains with more of the latter as the choice was higher. According as the quality by animal choice went lower, so the ratio of corn to gain went higher. The weanling animals preferred to gain as the protein quality of the legume hay determined by choice, rather than to fatten by the corn as the carbohydrate part of the ration.
Born, as our pigs are, for a short life-span of near six months, sorely beset by prompt castration and rapid onset of a severe case of obesity, they serve prominently as an economic fit (not necessarily a naturally healthy one) into the eastern mid-continent. That is the climatic soil setting where corn as an excessively high-carbohydrate diet for the fattening pigs (much as it is for France’s Strasburger geese of “pate de foie gras” fame), is blended with the minimum of protein supplements. That practice gives us a ton-litter per sow-mother and much-desired farm mortgage lifter in the hog’s brief life time of a half-year. It is that same region of the hog to which the cattle come from the West for a duplicate fattening treatment or “finishing” experience. They are the quickly-accepted companions of the hogs following in close company to which the ruminants give delectable dietary supplements of ample vitamin B12 and possibly other similar fecal contents of values not yet catalogued.
Limited Area. The mid-continent is a limited area, but has the unique climatic forces developing soils which grow both proteins and carbohydrates in its West, but mainly carbohydrates only in its East. This mid-continent is our country’s great natural food asset. About ninety percent of its soils are in farms. Under recent technological soil treatments, many of them have pushed up their grain yields for feed concentrates as much as one hundred percent. Surprisingly too, that area is the most efficient in radio reception. That is a natural correlation with healthy plants chosen as feed for healthy animals when that means of wireless communication by electrical phenomena finds its higher efficiency on the fertile and more productive soils which are, by that character, simultaneously better conductors of electricity for broadcasting. Also in terms of the most universal human ailment, tooth decay, the mid-continent has the lowest numbers of caries of teeth per human mouth.
The figures for those increase on going both to the west and to the cast of that unique agricultural soil area.2
When the feed choices of warm-blooded animals seem to fit them so healthily into their environment; and when the lowly and fixed forms of life exhibit a similar natural relation between their healthy existence and the degree of soil development under particular climatic forces; must we not recognize those many interrelations and the interdependencies of all life forms (including livestock) all resting on the soil as the creative force and foundation?3 Accordingly, isn’t it high time to consider managing the health of farm animals by managing fertile soils for protein according as the carefully observed choices by animals (and our soil test arranged for such) make suggestions? Likewise, must we not guard against pollutions of the environment, so common when man takes over the extensive management of that also, but under emphasis on the advantages of economics and technologies and disregard of the biotic requisites of the many life forms which help to feed him?
II. Nutritional Value of Feed Crops Depends on Organic and Inorganic Fertility of Soils Growing Them
Proteins vs. Carbohydrates. The soil’s control of the chemical composition of the crop it grows transcends any guarantee of nutritional value as feed by the pedigree of the planted seed. Our plants, like the animals, are also struggling for proteins by which they grow, protect themselves and reproduce. They, too, require a balanced diet, i.e. of soil fertility in definite portions, if they are to be healthy enough to survive.
When our main concern has been about crops for their big yields of bulk and so little concern has gone to their nutritional value, we would little appreciate the natural law which tells us that as our soils vary in their degree of development, so they deliver varied plant compositions, either (a) as one of largely carbohydrates with mainly fattening feed values for older animals on highly humid soils, or (b) as one of both carbohydrates and ample proteins with many other nutritional uplifts connected with the latter as nutritional guarantee of growing younger animals on the semi-humid and semi-arid soils.
Calcium vs. Potassium. As a simple illustration of the above law, there is the balance of calcium (magnesium), which is a relatively high requirement by crops growing on soils under 25- inch or less rainfall, against that of potassium. The requirement of the latter is relatively high by crops growing on humid soil in contrast to their demands for calcium, when yet they emphasize big yields of crop bulk under ample rain as water for such. It is commonly granted by the farmers, that calcium is important in growing legume crops of high - protein and rich - mineral contents. That is a natural fact well established by laboratory and field research. That potassium is physiologically important in the plant’s synthesis and mobilization of its carbohydrates is an equally well established natural fact. Accordingly, the higher concentration of protein in the natural vegetation bespeaks a much higher supply of available calcium (magnesium) than of available potassium in the soil. The effects of that higher ratio of the former to the latter in the soil fertility are modified by the soil’s supply of active phosphorus and particularly the latter’s association with soil organic matter. Thus, the plant nutrition from the soil, in either balance or imbalance, decides in the main whether the nutritional feed value we grow is one for either growing healthy young livestock or mainly for fattening older animals.
Chemical analyses of crops grown commonly, (a) on the slightly developed soils under scant rainfall of the West, (b) on those moderately developed ones in the mid-continent, and (c) on those highly developed soils of the Northeast and the Southeast, have mean percentage contents of calcium (CaO) in the following respective order, (a) 1.92, (b) 1.17 and (c) 0.28. If we set the values for calcium and potassium in the highly developed soils (c) at unity or the value of one, then the respective values for contents of calcium for the differently developed soils become (a) 6.8, (b) 4.1 and (c) 1.0, while for potassium they are (a) 1.9, (b) 1.6 and (c) 1.0. These latter two sets of figures tell us that as a promoter of protein production in the forages of the slightly developed soils of the West, the calcium in the soil is in a wide ratio to the potassium there as it is also in the forages. Consequently, when the calcium weathers out of the soil relatively so much faster than does the potassium, that natural fact moves the crops from those of higher protein and nutritional contents to those of lower ones. It brings in the call for protein supplements, even for fattening purposes.
When plants merely pile up carbohydrates, they build big yields of crops as bulk. But in growing proteins, they burn much of the carbohydrates to accomplish the syntheses of them. They also use the carbohydrates as starter compounds for that process. High nutritional values are not naturally associated with big yields as the natural rule.
The above relation of declining concentrations of protein in the crops to the higher rate of depletion of the calcium than of the potassium in the soil was shown by an experiment. A highly fertile soil given increasing applications of elemental sulfur and exposed to leaching conditions of humid soils decreased the ratios of available calcium to potassium very decidedly and of that calcium to each of the other nutrients measured (Figure I).
The significance in modifying the crop’s composition shown here by the balance and imbalance between only two of the nutrient elements, viz. calcium and potassium, can be expected as well between any pairs, triples, or more of the essential nutrients listed to date. Research is multiplying to report such variations in compositions of crops due to soil treatments reported promptly by animal choices and discriminations. Those are also being verified by biochemical tests even to variation in amounts of amino acids as measures of the completeness of the proteins as nutrition. Only a few reports about interactions of nutrient elements recognized in the soil, in the plants and the animals will be given here.
Potassium and Sodium. Since these two are monovalent alkali elements and highly soluble, they are not held strongly as part of the proteins within the cell. They are, therefore, in its liquid contents and outside of it. They influence other elements highly. In the husbandman’s language “The plant gorges itself with potassium.” It is accumulated in the cells more rapidly and to a higher degree than the bivalent calcium and magnesium.
If one makes up a nutrient solution of equivalent concentrations of potassium, sodium, calcium and magnesium, their respective uptakes will be widely different should one use five plants like buckwheat, sunflower, maize (corn), potato and plantain (marine), as has been reported.4 The percentage of the plant’s total cations made up by each element will vary widely amongst those crops, as do the totals. Sodium, as the percentages in the plants listed above varied from 0.9 to 28.5; potassium from 39.0 to 70.0; calcium from 11. to 33.; and magnesium from 11 to 27.
That the cells of the plant tissue are each a biochemical institution in its own rights is further shown when the roots of one plant exclude sodium while those of another take it abundantly. Yet the plant that excluded sodium took magnesium two and one-half times as abundantly as the one that took sodium so generously. Maize (corn) was the highest in uptake and concentration of potassium but lowest in calcium. That dilemma in quality is a sequel to our selection of that crop for the maximum of vegetative bulk resulting from maximum output of carbohydrates but the minimum of proteins; all with little of nutritional value as growth potential for young animals.
Most grasses duplicate corn in its luxury consumption of potassium. Consequently, the herbivora may ingest per day 500-600 gms. of the element potassium which is 10 to 12 times their requirements. On the other hand, the amount of sodium ingested rarely exceeds half of the requirements, according to studies in the Netherlands.5 Accordingly, herbivora excrete significant quantities (85 percent of uptake) of potassium, mainly in the urine, to raise the active potassium in the surface soil layer.
Potassium tends to reduce magnesium absorption by the animal unless the forage is high in the latter. But its absorption is favored if the forage contains liberal concentrations of phosphates and/or crude proteins (nitrogen). The reduction of magnesium absorption is encouraged also by low sodium in the feed, but saponins (soaps) in plants have the opposite effects.6
As additional elements, calcium and magnesium demonstrate their interplays and antagonisms with the plant’s nutrition and that of the animal. High concentrations of calcium in the forage usually raises the needs for magnesium. These two as exchangeable amounts in the soil are recommended in a ratio of at least seven of calcium to one of magnesium. So, similarly, high calcium in the feed raises the need for magnesium. This need is accentuated as the phosphorus there is higher. The increased concentration of phosphorus also modifies the effects of the ratio of calcium to potassium.
Balance for Plants, Thereby for Animals. Imbalances, and interactions in the soil which modify the nutrition of the plants and consequently of the animals by other sets of elements might be cited. But the preceding ones are sufficient to remind us that every plant is; (a) limited to drawing carbon for nutrition in photosynthesis of carbohydrates from a small zone in the atmosphere according to diffusion and air transportation; and, (b) confined to that limited soil volume encompassed by the extent of roots’ contact for requisites of all other synthetic processes. It, too, is struggling to be nourished by a balanced diet of (a) inorganic or “ash” elements and (b) organic compounds of its own synthesis and of such by both fungi and bacteria within the root zone and the rhizosphere of the limited root surface.
It is the microbes, within those soils containing ample organic matter, that correct and alleviate imbalances and antagonistic effects between the several nutrient elements when excessively ionic effects occur from any one of high solubility. Such high availability makes it quickly taken over by the microbes in advance of its uptake by the plants. It is put by them into organic compounds exhibiting its non-ionic behavior because of chelation into larger molecular units. That is a unique service in plant disease prevention by the soil microbes scarcely appreciated when we are so prone to believe microbes the causes of disease. According as we keep provoking the soil microbes into hasty and excessive consumption of the reserve soil organic matter through use of salt fertilizers, the soil’s buffering capacities against our imbalanced treatments will be reduced to where the hidden dangers to healthy animal nutrition will become more baffling. We do not yet appreciate the soil microbes as shock absorbers via soil organic matter as the counter-acting energy source.
III. Discrimination Between Feeds Reports Animal Assays of Nutritional Values According to Soils Growing Them
Choice — A Natural Phenomenon. Any grazing animal is a natural phenomenon of one form of life struggling to survive. It is not a demonstration, so much, of our capable management. Wild animals do not choose to be fattened when that is a sickening process which we admit so widely when in case the human struggle to survive it results in obesity and the sextette of degenerative ailments which are a sequel of it.7 Why does an animal first reach over and then break through the fence to the highway or railroad right of way? Isn’t it the higher quality of feed offered by the virgin soils and so reported by the beast that risks its life in demonstrating its choice by going there?
Conversely, the animals demonstrate their refusal and voluntary starvation when they do not take the green grassy spots of tall plants resulting from fecal and urinary droppings. When it is said so commonly that “a sick sheep is as good as a dead one” are we not demonstrating how poorly we have been feeding them while they have been politely protesting under starvation without showing readily evident symptoms right up to the point of their death?
When the cow comes through a mile of southern piney woods on the coastal plains soils to get the limited grazing along the edge of the highway serving as calcium fertilizer, are we recognizing what a capable assayer of quality of her feed that head of livestock is? We indict ourselves when we do no more than erect highway signs asking the motoring public to avoid killing the animals.
Organic Values. Even the hog, considered so voracious, is a very keen discriminator if you will put the corn grains of the same soil given different treatments into the separate compartments of the self-feeder to measure the different consumptions of each under repeated trials. It was under such test conditions that the hoggish beasts refused to take the corn grown where sweet clover was turned under as green manure ahead of the corn planting. But they took decidedly of that grain where the ripened sweet clover residues were turned under simultaneously.
In that demonstration, the difference in the quality of the grain as feed because of that slight difference in the organic fertilizers was enough to let the pig report its ability to recognize the difference in what it chooses to eat as food for survival. Knowing now that green sweet clover contains the drug, dicumerol, which prohibits blood-clothing and invites the injured animal’s bleeding to death, shall we say the animal avoids that drug which may possibly be moved as organic compound from the soil, through the corn plant, and into the corn grain from the green manure but not the fully matured one turned into the soil ahead of planting the corn?
Numerous other discriminations by animals, both wild and domestic, could be cited of difference in the feed unnoticed by the feeder. We are prone to disregard the suggestions of the fastidious animals. We remain unmindful of the simple fact that they are feed customers of our best possible feed service with highest pay by them for such. They have no alternative but to take our decisions on quality in disregard of theirs. Should we be surprised and alarmed then, by the many animal disasters, like sterility, diseases, pests, feed poisons, deaths, etc., from the malnutrition we perpetuate under technologies and economics but in disregard of the biotic laws of nature to which the animals try to adhere in spite of us?
IV. Animals’ Choices Represent Values Beyond Laboratory Measurements
We are slow to believe that the health troubles of our livestock may be connected, (a) with the plant species we choose to grow for feed, and (b) with the declining fertility of the soils on which the chosen crops are grown. Instead of aiming at better animal health by choice of plants of higher protein potential and by supplying the soil fertility conditions required for those as their virgin crops had them, or even as the best known practices grow them; we are prone to bring seed from anywhere without careful observation of the soil conditions growing it in its choice climatic setting, and to plant it anywhere without duplicating the soil fertility level to which the crop was truly natural. Emphasis is strong on the crop pedigree but weak of the soil fertility to create it. When a crop makes much bulk for yield on a poor soil, and is of such low feed value (possibly poisonous) that the animal develops a deficiency of vitamins etc., suggesting “hoof disease” the ailment takes the name of the crop, e.g. “fescue foot.” We are slow to see the depletion of soils bring on a succession of substitutions making less and less of nutritional values of crops but in satisfying yields of bulk. Emphasizing fattening values for quick gains in weight, we miss the need to keep the animal healthy for the survival time required for even that process.
Animal Wisdom. Research, relating the fertility treatments of the soil to the crop’s nutritional values as animal-favored choices was begun at the Missouri Agricultural Experiment Station in the early forties. Two experiments deserve citation here in which domestic rabbits were the test animals. Those trials established the animal’s choice as one of unusual biochemical accuracy in assaying the quality of the hay according to the fertility balances or imbalances of the soil growing the forage.
Four plots of a series in alfalfa were harvested and used for feeding trials with weanling rabbits as cooperating chemists. The plot numbers and soil treatments were as follows: plot 3, none; plot 1, 60 pounds nitrogen per acre in spring and after each cutting; plot 10, 100 pounds ammonium nitrate, 200 pounds superphosphate, 60 pounds muriate of potash and 2 tons limestone on the acre basis every six years, and plot 6, the duplicate of plot 10 but every two years.
The order of choice was first determined by offering constant amounts of each of the four hays along with a given weight of corn and measuring the daily consumptions of hay and grain. That soon established the order of choice in which they were listed above for the plots and soil treatments, namely plots 3, 1, 10, 6.
As a sequel, in another test, each hay was fed separately with corn grain from the same lot to measure (a) hay consumed, as well as grain, (b) gains in weight, (c) ratio of hay to gain, and (d) ratio of corn to gain.
Since plot 3 was the choice, it gave the highest gain in weight of animal; was next to highest in hay consumption; and was lowest in ratio of hay to gain, and likewise, in ratio of corn to gain. Accordingly, the rabbit’s choice was definitely the selection of the hay for the most rapid growth of the weanling animal and at the combination of soil treatments for hay of the highest quality as growth potential. (Figure II)
In terms of gains the rabbits reported the values of the four hays in the following order with first choice as 100 percent, and the others as 90, 65 and 50 percents of that. The amounts of hay taken, demonstrate a self-denial of both hay and corn according as the hay was of lesser choice, in the order of first choice as 100 percent, namely, 100, 102, 55 and 50. These animals used the choice of the hay to decide on starvation but that of corn also according as it balanced the hay.
Such a report casts decided doubt whether as managers of soils and of crops, or as feeders, we have been pleasing our animals as producers growing them under confinement, on rations of our specifications, and grown on our fertilized soils. In this case of alfalfa, already so widely grown, and with so many kinds of soil treatments, the rabbits voted against all of the three offered for their consideration under assay.
A second and similar test used red clover hays from four plots on Sanborn Field grown in a four-year rotation of corn, oats, wheat, and red clover since 1888. The procedures were similar to those used in the first test reported here. The order of choice established by the rabbits for these plots and soil treatments were the following; plot 36, full soil treatment according to soil test plus magnesium limestone; plot 34, 6 tons manure annually; plot 39, full soil treatment plus calcium limestone; and plot 35, no treatment.
Big Lesson from Livestock. Here again the choice by the animals represented the highest efficiency of the red clover and corn in combination to grow weanling rabbits at the most rapid rate. Again, regardless of the possible threat of starvation, the animals consumed the corn at a certain balance with the hay. More significant was the choice of the hay as a daily quantity to be taken, regardless of whether that resulted in added growth or not of the body. (Figure III)
Such data are undeniable evidence that the animal is a most capable biochemist in assaying feed values for its growth (not for fattening) and in selecting those according to differences in quality of the crops (not as yields per acre) as nutrition for healthy growth of the animals. Such data given us by rabbits as cooperative test-chemists tell us, to our chagrin, that what we have been doing to our soils may not have been undergirding, or meeting the animals’ approval in, their natural struggle for healthy survival. Simultaneously, the data tell us that we have big lessons to learn by using them as cooperators in selecting their rations. They have here shown that they are most capable biochemists, who do not interpret their data of livestock feeding for advantages in economics only. Instead they tell us that the animals will cooperate with us in livestock production if our goal, like theirs, is the growth of healthy animals via the fertility maintenance of the soil for that kind of biotic service, within which man can also be included.
1 A late announcement cites hemophilia (bleeding disease) of hogs as a new disease. Missouri Farm News Service, 53: No. 27, March 4, 1964.
2 Wm. A. Albrecht. Our Teeth and Our Soils. Ann. of Dentistry, 6:199-213, 1942. Also Mo. Agr. Expt. Sta. Cir. 333. 1948.
3 Those interdependencies of the life forms rather than only on the physical forces may well be expected when “it took less than an hour to make the atoms, a few (say three hundred million years to make the stars and their planets, but three billion years to make man.” George Gamow. The Creation of the Universe. The American Library, 501 Madison Avenue, New York 22, New York.
4 Runar Collander. Selective Absorption of Cations by Higher Plants. Plant Physiology 16: 16:691-780. 1941.
5 B. Sjollema et al. Investigations into Hypo. magnesemia in Bovines. Tydschr. Diergeneesh 80:579-604, 1111-1134, 1955.
6 Andre Voisin. Grass Tetany. Part II. “Mineral Balances of Soil and Mineral Balances of Grass.” Crosby Lockwood and Son Ltd., London. 1963.
7 Blake F. Donaldson. Strong Medicine. Doubleday; New York. Lists the “obesity sevtette” as hardening of the arteries, arterioscleroses, heart failure, osteo-arthritis, diabetes and gallstones, none of which is classed as an infectious disease.
