18 agriculture; OF MAINE. 



results, omitting considerations of cost and other important items. 

 Practical feeders include these. Hence have arisen two distinct 

 kinds of feeding standards, the physiological and the practicable ; 

 the one built to produce the most at any cost, with due regard 

 to animal health ; the other formulated to produce the most for 

 the unit of food and expenditure. The one ignores, the other 

 considers the cost of the ration. The former is a fairly definite, 

 the latter an indefinite thing. The physiological standards rep- 

 resent the results of experiments and present knowledge as to 

 the physiological needs of farm animals. The practical standards 

 are essentially home made, are based upon and usually are pro- 

 foundly affected by physiological standards, but are the product 

 of the experience, observation and study of the individual feeder. 

 The latter are in many ways more important. Such as may be 

 interested in this particular branch of "cowology" may, if they 

 will, get for the asking our Bulletin 81 on the principles and 

 practice of stock feeding. Address Experiment Station, Burling- 

 ton, Vt. 



Those who have done the closest thinking on this matter 

 are nearly a unit in the opinion that it is difficult to grow 

 all the needed protein in Northern New England, but easy to 

 grow all the necessary carbohydrates. The great American car- 

 bohydrate crop is corn ; such protein as we can produce is best 

 grown in clover or early cut hay. When a dairyman goes to the 

 feed stores which does he buy, protein or carbohydrates? I do 

 not know how it is in Maine, but four times out of five in Ver- 

 mont he buys carbohydrates rather than protein, buys that which 

 he has or should have in abundance and does not buy the nutrient 

 which his cows need for milk production, and in which his ration 

 is usually lacking. As has been well said, the farmer in these 

 northern states should make his dairy farm a carbohydrate fac- 

 tory and when he buys, if he buys at all, should buy protein. 



One word about the silo. Some people having silos still think 

 it the best practice to pluck the ears from the corn and to put the 

 stover into the silo. The plucking of the ears and grinding them 

 for the hog, or getting the kernel for the horse and the hen, is 

 all right ; but so far as the cow is concerned, were she given 

 speech, she would beg of you to leave the ears on the stalk and 

 put them into the silo. The testimony of the experiments at 

 several stations is a unit. The cows, when they have had an 



