DAIRY m£;j;ting. 143 



the milk records. We know that there is something wrong 

 and nine times out of ten we can remedy that before the cow 

 is actually sick, simply because the milk records have indicated 

 that she is not just right. That one thing is worth more than 

 anything else in weighing the milk. 



There are other things that we must consider in feeding the 

 dairy cow. But few of us realize the cost of maintenance of 

 the dair}' cow ; but few of us realize that she has to utilize a 

 large portion of the food which is fed to her for maintenance 

 alone and the actual profit comes to the dairyman from the 

 amount of food which is fed in excess of the amount required 

 for maintenance. That one thing has led numerous investi- 

 gators and a good many who are studying the problem to en- 

 deavor to discover why it was that one cow was capable of 

 producing more than another, — a cow that seemingly was bred 

 the same and was the same in every way as the other. It may 

 be that the ability of the cow to eat, digest and assimilate an 

 extra amount of food above maintenance compared to that of 

 another cow is partially responsible for the fact that the cow is 

 able to do more work. That perhaps is a small feature but it 

 is something which we have to take into consideration. 



Just a word relative to the rations which we feed our cows; 

 simply a few suggestions. One of the prerequisites in making 

 up a feeding ration is that it shall be bulky. If you make up 

 a ration of concentrates that passes into the cow's stomach in 

 a close mechanical mixture, like cottonseed meal, corn meal, 

 gluten feed or some other compact feed, I think you will agree 

 with me that you do not get the best results. We probably do 

 not get a complete digestion of these foods, or as complete as 

 we ought to, whereas if we had put in some bulky material 

 even though it had contained no food nutrients at all, we would 

 have got better results. In studying feeding conditions in the 

 growing of beef, several things came to our attention, one of 

 which is that it was possible in feeding beef cattle to get ap- 

 proximately the same amount of gain from a pound of corn 

 and cob meal as it was from a pound of clear corn meal. We 

 know of course that there is considerable more digestible food 

 nutrients in the pound of corn meal than in the pound of corn 

 and cob meal. I think we will have to say that the reason we 

 got the same results was that the one was bulky and there was 



