lOfi BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Here we have in the f'kim milk which we can use for food for farm 

 animals, 90 parts of water and 10 of solid matter, approximately. 



What is its value as food? 



There is no available solid matter that the farmer has on his farm 

 so valuable for food, pound for pound, as the solid matter of skim 

 milk or whole milk. In the tirst i)lace it is wholly digestible. From 

 a half to Iwo-thiids or three-fourths only of the hav, corn, meal or 

 cotton seed, and I don't care what else, that you feed your animals 

 is available for use by the animal, and the rest is rejected. In the 

 case of good Timothy hay the animal will reject from two-tifths to a 

 half of it as useless. But in the case of the constituents of skim 

 milk every bit is soluble in the juices of the stomach and the diges- 

 tive tract, and we can sa}' with certainty that every bit of it is 

 utilized in the sense of being taken up into the blood and carried to 

 different parts of the system. Another thing is true. In order to 

 make the foods produced by the farmer for his cattle well-balanced, 

 and to supply a recognized want, there mast be introduced more of 

 this nitrogenous material. The most of the farmers raise no cattle 

 food, unless they go into raising peas, that is particularly nitrogen- 

 ous, a small amount of clover excepted, and the skim milk of the 

 farm fills an important place in furnishing the muscle-forming 

 material which is so essential, especially in the growth of the young 

 animal — a place that no other common, home-produced food does 

 fill to so great an extent, in the economy of stock feeding. There 

 is no question about that. You see that out of 10 pounds of solid 

 matter in 100 of skim milk there is over a third of it nitrogenous 

 material that is entirely digestible and available for use by the 

 animal. 



I suppose you will now turn and say : "That is all very well. It 

 sounds well and may be good science. But give us some practical 

 examples. Give us an example of the value ot this skim milk. 

 Show it in dollars and cents," and that is what I will try to do. All 

 of the past week I have been studying the work that has been done 

 by several experimenters, men of good hard sense, men who can 

 make an experiment that is practical in its bearings. I have been 

 studying their results, and I have found the dollars-and-cents side of 

 this matter. I have on the board here the result of some feeding 

 experiments that have been carried on at the Maine experiment 

 station, and at the Massachusetts and Wisconsin stations. And 

 let me say here that the work done with animals at these stations is 



