DAIRY MEETING. 121 



COMMERCIAL FEEDING STUFFS. 



By Dr. Chas. D. Woods, Director Maine Agricultural Experi- 

 ment Station, 



[This address by Director Woods was practically a "black 

 board" or "crayon talk." The composition of the different 

 feeding stuffs and the calculations were written out while they 

 were discussed.] 



This is no new subject and I have nothing new to say upon 

 it, but I would like to present some facts with which you are 

 thoroughly familiar in a little different way, if possible, from 

 what we have usually considered them. I want to show you as 

 well as I can the way in which some of these matters in relation 

 to feeding stuffs present themselves to me. I will try to 

 illustrate on the sheet before you these things as I present them. 



THE COMPOSITION OF CORN. 



In the first place, if we are to look at corn from an economical 

 standpoint, we must consider the substances of which it is com- 

 posed. For instance, there is always some water in corn, no 

 matter how dry we get it. It contains on the average, 11.3 

 per cent of water, but that water, so far as we are concerned 

 this afternoon, has no particular value; it does not interest us. 

 There are also certain mineral matters in corn. When we burn 

 com we always have something left, — some ash or mineral mat- 

 ter, just as when we burn wood in a stove there are the ashes 

 left. There is perhaps 1.4 per cent of ash in the com. 



Corn contains some of that substance with which we are 

 familiar because we have seen the word upon the packages of 

 feeding stuffs which we have bought for the last ten years, — 

 protein. We know that this is the building part of the food, 

 and practically all of the articles that are used for food of man 

 or beast contain this nitrogenous material we call protein. The 

 protein in corn or corn meal is perhaps 10.5 per cen:, on the 

 average. 



There is also the woody fiber which binds the other constitu- 

 ents together. This is very conspicuous, for instance, in the 



