FEEDING DAIRY COWS. 49 



which his pockets are filled, he buys something which he lacks. 

 Wq lack the protein element of our feeds ; we have enough of 

 the carbohydrates. That is simply sunshine. You get enough 

 here in ]\Iaine. You can just as well use your sunshine as the 

 Kansas man's sunshine. Buy what you lack, and that is foods 

 strong in protein. What are some of them? Cottonseed meal, 

 gluten meal, linseed meal, distillers' grains, bran, middlings, etc. 

 \\'hich one you should buy depends upon the market in your 

 vicinity. Buy the one out of which you can get the most for a 

 dollar. Ordinarily speaking a man can probably get more pro- 

 tein for a dollar out of cottonseed meal than anything else, but 

 it is a food that should be handled very cautiously. You should 

 be very careful that you do not overfeed, and I never, under any 

 conditions, feed it alone. It is the most highly nitrogenous feed 

 of anything we have, but if care is not taken in feeding it, it is 

 liable to produce trouble. The same thing applies in a some- 

 what less degree to the glutens and distillers' grains. Ordinarily 

 bran is what you need to make the ration safe and give it proper 

 bulk, and it is in itself a most excellent ration. Cottonseed meal 

 tends to make butter hard, while gluten and linseed tend to make 

 it soft ; so if you are making butter you want to see to it that you 

 so combine your feeds that the result will not be injurious to the 

 product. 



One other point, you should consider what costs you most in 

 fertilizing your soil. When you buy chemical manures in the 

 spring, for what do you pay the most? The nitrogen, is it not? 

 I am no chemist, but practically speaking the nitrogen in the 

 fertilizer corresponds very closely with the protein in the food, 

 so that when you are buying protein for your cow with that very 

 same dollar you are buying nitrogen for the soil. The time has 

 been when the cheapest form in which, in some sections, one 

 could buy nitrogen for the soil, without any reference to feeding, 

 was in cottonseed meal, and this may be true in some parts of the 

 country today. Thousands of tons of it have been spread on the 

 soil simply for a fertilizer. Now when cottonseed meal is fed 

 to the cow, she takes out but a small proportion of the fertilizing 

 value. If proper care is taken of the manure, you can put back 

 upon your soil $i6 to $i8 worth of fertilizer for every ton of 

 cottonseed meal fed to the herd, and what is true of cottonseed 

 meal is true proportionately of the other feeds named. The fer- 



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