226 ANNUAL REPORT. OF THE Off. Doc. 



aud systeiiuititally arraiij^id, and I did not intend to so arrange it. 

 Till' (heme given to me is "Feeds aud Fertility," and before we are 

 through, we want to see the relationship between these two. 



Four things are to be considered in the selection of feeding stutfs. 

 I will call your attention to these and I want you to go out and give 

 a special emphasis to it. It has been too often the case that we sin- 

 gle out a single thing and feed- with that single thing in view, and 

 select our feed to that end. I want to say to you that it is important 

 (hat we consider four things in the selecting of feeding stutls. First, 

 the product sought, whether it is iiiilk or force or fat; w'hatever we 

 are after, the tirst thing to do is to select the food that will produce 

 most of that thing, and to vary of course, just according to the thing 

 that we want. If it is milk, it will be one thing; if it is fat it will be 

 another thing. 



Now then, if we all take up this chart, and look down for instance, 

 at the concentrates, just take that as an illustration, and you run 

 along down to buckwheat middlings; that is on the last page there — 

 buckwheat middlings, cotton-seed meal and all the way down through 

 those by-products — and we find this, that in a ton of cotton-seed meal, 

 we get 1,836 pounds of dry matter, and we want to know how much 

 dry matter is in a ration, that is, we want to know this because we 

 want to regulate our feeding by it; we find that there is in the neigh- 

 borhood of 26 pounds of dry matter in a ration — for a suitable ration 

 — 1,836 pounds of dry matter and 740 pounds of digestible protein. 

 Of course these things vary; I cannot stop to explain that now. Too 

 many feeders stop right at that point. There is another thing that 

 must be taken into consideration and that is the health of the animal, 

 the physical condition of the animal. Now we have to go outside 

 of what this chart gives, but we will know this, that if cotton-seed 

 meal is crowded in the steer you get a feverish condition. If you 

 are feeding silage, as you all ought to, that being loosening in its 

 nature, then those two things go together very well, and the health 

 of your animal is preserved. There is another thing you must take 

 into consideration; that is, the cost of the food. In selecting food it 

 don't do to feed a cow $50 worth of food and get |49 w^orth of milk. 



Let us look at wheat bran. I assume we are looking at cost now; 

 call it |24, I think that was the prevailing price last winter. You 

 get 240 pounds of digestible protein in a ton of it. If you pay |24 

 for a ton, you are pacing ten cents a pound for the protein; two 

 pounds of digestible protein costs you 20 cents and then there will 

 be the roughage; you want to keep that thing in mind all the time. 

 rt is a very helpful thing; it keeps the milk in good condition. 



Now^ let us look what the others cost. Cotton-seed meal at |27. 

 $28 or |30, I don't think it ever gets higher, Tt would only cost you 



