Why Your Cattle Break Through the Fence

In the production of livestock–like any other kind of agricultural output–we must have a margin between the costs and the sale price of the products. Unfortunately for the production of animals, more than simple controllable technologies come into play. The creation of living bodies is a biological process, and we cannot predict costs. Some costs in livestock and agriculture production as a whole are not yet catalogued. The majors among those are the contributions from the soils as chemical items we already recognize, but more significant are the creative powers for new life which as yet we know little or nothing about.

Keeping the life stream of our farm animals flowing is not as simple as keeping the assembly line in an automobile industry operating at full capacity. We still do not create livestock. It creates itself as best it can, possibly in spite of us more than because of us. Since the life stream is carried by the proteins of the feeds, and not by the carbohydrates and the fats which make up the bulk of what we offer our animals, the major problem ahead is that of growing quality proteins in our forages. Here again there is the biological process and one we do not manage except by way of the soil from which the creation of all life takes its start.

Power of Creation. We are slowly coming around to connect the soil with the nutrition of all our life forms, whether they be microbe, plant, animal, or man. We are all too slowly coming to see soil exploitation of the past and the present as the reason why our meat, milk, cheese, eggs, and other protein foods composing the very living body, or controlling its creation, by our animals are becoming scarcer, more costly and less abundantly produced. We must look to the soil as power of creation if we are to evaluate what is ahead for any part of agriculture, especially the livestock section.

We now recognize our farm animals as very able connoisseurs of the quality of their feeds. When we accept the self feeder, we admit that the pig will make a hog of himself quicker than we will. We can appreciate the unusual ability of our grazing cattle to assay the feed values of their forages more accurately than we can when we observe that they let the tall grass on the spot of their droppings grow taller, while they eat the short grass around it shorter. Then, too, they are always trying to get the grass on the other side of the fence, provided that other side of the fence is out on the highway or on the railroad right-of-way. They prefer such places because there the soil fertility has not been exhausted by excessive cropping.

Eternal Struggle. If, in grazing, they can call the nutritional qualities so accurately in their “dumb” way of telling us, shall we not come to see that by giving attention to better treatments of our soil with limestone and other fertilizers, we can very probably build the soils for better herds? Shall we not see that when the protein-rich crops, like the legumes, are considered “hard to grow,” that even plants, too, are struggling with the soil for their proteins by which their creative life stream flows to provide proteins for our animals?

Some simple observations may prompt us to ask ourselves some questions and to stimulate our thinking about the soil as it provides all that the cow would need to have coming from it, and whether a soil needs to meet only the limited requirements of being just something to be plowed, or to be manipulated by other agricultural machinery.

Forages grazed by the cow have been called “grass” and “hay.” They have been something to be cut with a mower or chopped, baled, stored in the barn, and measured as tons of dry matter. More machinery to reduce the labor requirements of the farmer has been guiding the production of grasses and hays, when, in our humble opinion, that effort should be guided with the concern for more fertility in the soil for better nutrition of the cow by means of those feeds. The machinery has become primary in the agricultural picture. The cow has become secondary, if one can judge by the growing tractor population in contrast to the cow population.

Question Raised. When the plants we call “weeds” grow tall in the pasture while others are grazed closely and seem to be growing shorter, this is regularly considered a call for the mowing machine to fight the weeds. Instead when weeds “take” the pasture, that ought to be viewed as a case in which the cow is giving a new definition for the word “weeds.” Careful observations of her behavior should raise the question in our minds whether she would suggest hormone sprays for the fight on weeds on a national scale.

She is apparently telling us that weeds are not so much a particular plant species of bad repute within the vegetable kingdom. Rather, weeds are any plants making too little of nutritional value to tempt her to eat them for it. She lets them grow taller and tolerates the degree of her own starvation required to do so. She is telling us that she does not choose her forage by the technical plant name. Instead, she chooses it by the nutritional values in the plant according as the soil fertility helps to fabricate food values in it.

Recently a case came to our attention in which a herd of beef cattle was regularly going through knee-deep bluegrass and white clover on a virgin prairie–never fertilized and never plowed–to graze out the formerly well-fertilized abandoned corn field of cockle burrs, briars, nettles, and a host of plant species considered our worst weeds. Most of them were the kind that are under legislative bans against distribution of their seeds.

Opinions Differ. Here the cows were contradicting our plant classifications. They were disregarding what we offered as supposedly good grazing in the form of the bluegrass, and were going the greater distance to consume the plants we have always called weeds and even noxious ones. Such was their choice, though only when the weeds were growing on more fertile soil. These cows would scarcely recommend the use of hormone sprays to kill certain plant species we classify as weeds. They would recommend more fertile soils instead. Then, apparently, no plant would be called “weeds” by them.

Cattle grazed this bluegrass pasture to the line of stakes, not because they watched the stakes but because that was the limit of soil treatments used on the right to make the quality of the forage suit the cattle so much better. An animal’s choice can be used to guide soil management for the growing of more and higher quality proteins.

 

When the cow breaks through the fence, is it her objective merely to get on the other side? A careful consideration of such cow behavior points out that she is not going from one of our fields to another one, both of which have had the fertility of the soil exhausted to a low level. Instead she is going from one of those areas of our neglected soil fertility to the railroad right-of-way, or to the public highway. She is going to where the soils are still near the virgin, fertile condition. Those soils have not been mined from their nutrient stores.

Supreme Judge. She is a judge of the feeding values, not the fattening values. She is producing offspring. She is calling for help in her struggles to keep her species multiplying. She is telling us of the shortage of inorganic substances to make bones, or of the proteins in relation to the carbohydrates. She is also telling us of the deficient qualities of the proteins in some of their parts essential for her biological processes. She will be telling us more when we learn more of the physiological processes on which she depends and which she exemplifies.

That the soil fertility makes a tremendous difference in the chemical composition of a single grass species, and one considered high in the scale of nutritious grazing, was shown recently by the research of the Soil Conservation Service of the USDA, in their analysis of little bluestem of the western Gulf Region. Samples of this choice feed of the once-prevalent American bison were collected in close proximity. They showed a range in protein from 1.5 to 16%, in phosphorus from .03 to .31%, in calcium from .07 to 1.58%, and in potassium from .10 to 2.17% of the dry matter. The higher values were as much as 10 times the lower ones in the cases of protein and phosphorus, 20 times for the calcium, and 21 times in the case of the potassium.

With such wide differences, even in the ash, would you believe the cow would have survived these many years if she had not been distinguishing between such extensive variations in plant composition?

Ash Elements. These were differences after the organic combinations influenced by, or containing, them had been destroyed by the ignition of the sample to leave only the ash. It says nothing about how widely the samples varied on the list of their organic compounds, like carbohydrates, proteins, and specific amino acids connected with the creative services these ash elements rendered.

It is significant that these widest variations occurred in calcium and potassium, which are only recently coming into consideration because of their deficiencies in the soil. Calcium has long been ammunition in the fight on soil acidity when during all that time it should have been at the head of the list of needed nutrient elements on most humid soils for the nourishment of plants, animals, and man.

The importance of the soil fertility in relation to the nutritional quality of the proteins has not yet had much attention. In this relation there seems to be much that spells deficiencies in nutrition going back more directly to the soil. In the humid soils of eastern United States we can grow corn in abundance. We are now considering a hundred bushels of this grain per acre as commonplace production. That has happened since we are growing a hybrid grain, the poor reproducing capacity of which is not recognized because it is not used as seed for the succeeding crop.

More “Go,” Less “Grow.” The size of the corn germ has been dwindling. Consequently the percentage of even “crude” protein in corn has been falling while at the same time the bushels per acre have been mounting. Protein production per stalk has become less and carbohydrate per stalk has become more. Capacity to help the animal make fat remains, but capacity for body growth and reproduction of the animal has fallen. We have more “go” food but less “grow” food.

When the seed of this major grass, i.e. corn, is failing in its delivery of protein within itself, shall we not expect the corresponding failure in protein delivery in the other grasses grown in the same Cornbelt and harvested at near maturity as hay? Is it possible that we are moving toward a pasture system of livestock farming because only the young grass is concentrated enough or complete enough in the proteins and all the nutrient substances associated with them to nourish our animals, and keep them reproducing? Then, too, are we not compelled to depend more on growing our own proteins because the once more common protein in supplements are required for feed nearer to the points of their origin?

All these questions should bring us to connect proteins more closely with the soil under the animal rather than with only the animal itself. The cow cannot deliver proteins except as they are provided for her in the feed, save for the supplementary synthetic helps she can get from the microbial flora in her intestinal tract.

Amino Deficiency. The corn plant as a producer of the more complete array of the amino acids essential for the white rat and thereby presumably for the cow, suggests its capacity for delivery of such quality of nutrition is limited to the germ of the corn grain. Complete nutritional service does not include the endosperm of that grain. One needs only to feed the whole corn grain to Guinea pigs, rabbits, or rats to see how they eat out the germ first and no more, if the grain is plentifully supplied. The complete grain is deficient in the amino acids, tryptophane, methionine, and even lysine. It is for the provision of these few deficient amino acids, then, that so-called protein supplements have always been, and must still be, supplied where the soil keeps plants from producing them.

Any other grass, like the corn plant and the grain it makes, cannot create the complete proteins required to nourish animals unless the soils growing it provide all the fertility elements and compounds the plant needs in its creative operations. Any plant is making carbohydrates when it grows. It is also making some proteins, but not necessarily these in terms of all the constituent amino acids the cattle must have to make muscle and to reproduce. It is the belief in the animal’s struggle for proteins that connects good pastures with fertile soils so definitely.

Ability Demonstrated. The animal’s ability to separate out the protein part in its feed, if given a chance, and the desperate struggle for that nutrient was clearly demonstrated by experimental trials with three pens of rabbits. They were each given 500 gram allotments of cracked corn grain which was changed to a new supply in the first pen after 25%; in the second pen after 50%; and in the third pen after 75% was consumed. By means of the rabbits’ selection and consumption of more germ and less endosperm while feeding, the chemical analyses of the remnants showed that the consumed part was pushed up in protein concentration from 7.31% for the total sample to (a) 8.12 (b) 7.87 and (c) 7.53% for the consumption of (a) 25, (b) 50, and (c) 75% respectively.

More significant was the fact that the gains in weights of the animals in relation to the protein consumed tell us that the animal is selecting not for making more weight of itself. The gains as units of weight produced per unit weight of protein consumed in the corn were (a) 1.57, (b) 2.07, and (c) 2.36 respectively. These figures tell us that the rabbit does not choose to eat carbohydrates, to gain rapidly in weight, or to put on fat. His ambition for himself is quite contrary to our plans for him. Consequently if the animal instinct calls for more protein, and if this factor of the animals’ nutritional wisdom has been working for better survival through better health and better reproduction when the animal roamed at large, shall we not use the animal’s choice to guide us in the treatments of the soil for soil improvement? Shall we not use the animal’s choice to guide our soil management for the growing of more proteins and especially those more complete in the essential amino acids by which we shall cooperate with the animals struggling to grow, rather than to fatten, themselves?

Quality Chosen. Merely more “crude” protein in the crops is also not the animal’s choice, according to experiments with rabbits. A corn crop was fertilized with increasing amounts of nitrogen. The final grain crop was increased in its concentration of protein by four increments of more nitrogen fertilizers to give (a) 7.09, (b) 8.03, (c) 8.95, and (d) 10.44% of protein in the grain. The rabbits were allowed to consume but 60% of the feed allotment before it was removed. When these four samples were all before them, they ate most of (a) and (b) but decidedly less of (c) and (d). They were telling us that the rabbit does not follow us and call for more of any crude protein as we measure protein and get more of it.

Our animals are choosing according to the quality of the proteins and not just quantity of nitrogen multiplied by 6.25 which is so commonly considered the protein we talk about. We need to learn of the quality of protein as it grows or repairs body cells, protects against invasions by foreign proteins, and reproduces the species, or as the animals apparently call for it when they judge it in their feeds. 

The wool crop is one of protein. Sheep fed hay grown on soil given phosphate and limestone give a wool which scoured out well and carded nicely (upper photos). Sheep fed hay from an adjoining plot given only phosphate fertilizers had wool which scoured out so poorly it could not be carded without breaking the fibers, as shown in lower photos.

 

Fortunately for our beef supply, most of it resulted because the cow and her calving operation were on the western plains or the open range. It was on the unweathered, more fertile soils, that those processes took place. Now that we have exploited the soil fertility and most of our animal industry is one of fattening the animal, we are coming face to face with the need for the proteins grown to be more complete for animal reproduction. The costs in that process are reasons for artificial insemination. Failures in reproduction are blamed on microbial invasions, because they recognize a dying cow before we do. Nevertheless, with all the artificials in feeds, drugs, inoculations, or what have you, the high percentages of sterile cows, and the aborters, continually hamper the profit aspect. Trouble is ahead if one can judge the trend, and the hope lies in the soils as both the provocation and prevention of most of the difficulties.

Question Raised. Under artificial procedures, the numerous matings required for conception, which usually succeed eventually in case of natural insemination, cause us to give up and turn the shy-breeder over for slaughter. This should provoke some serious thinking. Such observations ought to raise the question whether the larger dose of semen repeatedly served by the male, in the former practice, is not a kind of successive hormone administration to bring about better ovulation and eventual conception. This may not be the case under the limited semen supply which is now used in the latter practice.

Under declining soil fertility and corresponding decline in feed values, the load of reproduction is becoming too heavy to be carried successfully during the period of gestation. If the increasing abortions and the mounting percentages of so-called “midget” calves are not studied more critically in terms of nutrition, rather than dodged by putting the blame on some aspect offering more mental escape, these losses may occur astoundingly often.

Abortions in some parts of Missouri bring about figures equally as appalling. In this latter case, the fight on some microbes–which may be only a symptom and not the cause–stimulates the search for serums from similar microbes under laboratory culture which gives an escape via what suggests a kind of blind alley. This so-called “disease” is now having the cows killed to eliminate the “disease” while it is eliminating our cows too. It is following a line of reasoning like burning down the house to get rid of bed bugs. But in the case of the “midgets” even the belief that it is a breeding problem is of no consolation. It is not limited to either beef or dairy types. Nor is it limited to any one breed in either of these groups.

Trouble Source. A few studies of the blood chemistry of the “midgets” have found such low levels, and near absences, of some of the soil-borne essential elements to suggest the source of the trouble in some nutritional deficiencies in the cow’s feed, or troubles going back to the soil for their origin. Even then, the soil-borne essential elements must do more than hitch-hike from the soil through the crop, through the cow to the foetal calf. The creation of the “midget” calf suggests its irregularities traceable to irregularities in the fertility of the soil and the feed grown on it. It is leaning toward a waning faith in breeding but a waxing hope in feeding.

If our failing soil fertility is still supporting the plants as producers of carbohydrates, but is letting them down as producers of proteins, is it too much of a stretch of the imagination to see the cow being let down in calf production to the “midget” level during gestation by the low level of feeds pulled down by the deficiencies in the soil?

When the means by which body characters are transmitted from generation to generation seem so mystical to many folks, genetics as a new science is seized in hope of an explanation, especially when so much is still unknown and yet nature has done so much. The plant breeder has been hoping to breed legume forages which will “tolerate” soil acidity. He has had hopes of breeding cereals that will “tolerate” low winter temperatures, the smuts, the rusts, and hosts of other troubles suggesting themselves as manifestations of the plants’ physiological inequality to the soil’s limited offerings. Other aspects of the setting which involves the plant is the struggle to create the proteins by which it grows and protects itself from invasions by foreign proteins.

Knowledge Needed. Only as we see feed proteins in their complete array of the quantities of amino acids balanced for body growth, for reproduction, and for protection against the invasion of foreign proteins like viruses and microbes; only as we learn more about how the cow would feed herself for offspring production rather than how we would carry her cheaply through the winter or fatten her; only as we discover the details of plant physiology by which we can know the crops which in combination will give us the complete proteins as feed; and finally, only as we know more about the soil fertility management that will undergird the plants’ struggle in making proteins from the required chemical elements, can we expect to start the assembly line of the creation of livestock so that it will run in high order and without mishaps at all stages along that line.

Only as we build up the soil can we escape the fact that our proteins, which minister to better health for man and his animals, are becoming scarcer because the soil fertility for the soil’s power of creation is going lower.

Rebuilding our soils is no small matter ahead as we view not only livestock production but good nutrition and good health also for ourselves.