The New Student's Reference Work/Balanced Ration

Balanced Ration, the daily food of farm animals containing the proportion of tissue-producing and heat-producing food-elements calculated to give the best results under different conditions of development and requirements of work. The first sort of foods are the nitrogenous (protein) foods, of which egg-albumen and wheat gluten are familiar types drawn from human foods. The second includes the carbonaceous foods, as starches and sugars (carbohydrates) and fat, or, more strictly speaking, materials soluble in ether (ether extract). Protein can also furnish heat, but, being so much more expensive, the feeder's problem is to add as much carbonaceous food as will supply the necessary heat and also, if the animal if intended for food, as can be converted into fat. The proportion of protein to heat-producing elements is called the nutritive ratio. When the proportion of heat-producing elements is large, the ratio is said to be wide; when small, it is narrow. Thus timothy hay and oat-straw, with proportions of 1:16.7 and 1:34, are examples of wide ratios. Soy beans, 1:1.9, have a narrow ratio. Corn, 1:10, has a medium ratio. For growing cattle a balanced ration is about 1:4.5; for fattening cattle, 1:6; for heavily worked horses, 1:6; for light-worked horses, 1:7, It is no more important to know the amount of these materials in a ration than to know the percentage of their digestibility. The results of the many analyses and experiments in feeding have been embodied in the Wolff-Lehmann feeding standards, which form the basis of all calculations of the feeding value of different food compounds used by stockmen. See Henry's Feeds and Feeding.