Butter Versus Oleomargarine in Ricket Control in Pigs

Abstract

The following report covers one year's experimental work in a co(Sperative experimental project between the Dairy Department • and the Animal Husbandry of the West Virginia University and Experiment Station. This project is the more recent development of an earlier project started by these two departments in 1923 to study the vitn.min A deficiency in white corn and to secure a comparative economic measurement of this deficiency by supplementing a white corn basal ration with butter, which was rich in vitamin A, and also oleomargarine commonly considered to contain lesser amounts of vitamin A. In the progress of this earlier project it was noted that when oats were fed in the basal white corn ration that the pigs did not develop rachitic symptoms at about 90 days as was commonly experienced in white corn feeding. Oats have not been previously classed by investigators as having either vitamin A, the growth promoting vitamin, or vitamin D, the anti-rachitie vitamin, in noticeable amounts. The same oat fed lots of pigs when fed butter and oleo failed in the ordinary feeding period of 90 to 100 days to show any rachitic symptoms. This led to the development of a supplementary project in 1926, in which the basal ration used in 1923-1924-1925 was changed to a new basal ration, containing white corn, buckwheat middlings and tankage and the same mineral mixture as the original basal rations, but without oats being used. Butter and oleo were used as in the earlier project with both basal rations, 2 ounces being fed daily throughout the feeding period for each 100 pounds live weight. Table 1 shows the results of this trial. This trial shows rather strikingly the fact that when oats were