Excerpt from Fodder Crops of the Punjab

This food is produced in the parent plant from the materials that it has collected from the soil or the air and passes into the developing seed large numbers of different substances are stored in this way by different plants, but they can be grouped in two main classes according as they do or do not contain combined nitrogen The non-nitrogenous matter is usually either starch or 011, while the nitrogenous matter is in various forms which are known collectively as albuminoids or proteids Animals are made up of precisely the same elementary substances as plants, though they require to consume these substances in different forms, and convert them into such things as skin, bones and muscles, not leaves, flowers, or seed. We have seen that the most important product of plants from the nutritive point of view are (l) starch and the various sugars, and (2) the proteids; when speaking of animals it is more convenient to call these respectively work food and flesh food.

The first class supply energy which enables an animal to go on working, but the second class (which it will be remembered contain nitrogen) are essential to replace the wear and tear of substance that is constantly going on in an animal body in order to feed an animal so as to get the best work out of it, it is necessary not only to see that the weight of food given is sufficient, but also that it contains a due proportion of flesh food. Now we have seen that most of the flesh food produced by plants is stored in the seeds, and very little of it in the leaves and stems*: it follows that when cattle are doing hard work they ought to receive a fair amount of seed or grain as well as fodder, and even when they are idle some grain should be given to keep them in really good health.

For further information about food and the nutritive value of different grains, Church's Food Grains of India may be consulted. It is worth while to note that a standard diet for human beings should contain albuminoids and starch in about the proportion of 1 - 5. This is very much the proportion in which they exist in wheat, but in the millets and maize the proportion is about 1 - 8, in rice about 1 - 11, and in mandwa 1 - 13. In pulses the proportion of albuminoids to starch is much higher than 1-5 hence the utility of such mixtures as rice and dal or bajra and moth khichri (porridge). The analyses of the chemical contents of the grain of different crops given in this note are taken from Professor Church's book. In paragraph 239 of his work on the Improvement of Indian Agriculture the late Dr. Voelcker remarked in 1893 that little was known as to the relative nutritive values of different fodders in India, and apparently this has so far not been remedied. No doubt the straw of the pulses generally contains more albuminoids than that of the cereals, and it is on this account that they are weight for weight more valuable as fodder.

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