ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



the trade, bleachings of the oats has been resorted to. From what 

 we can learn no harm can come from the feeding of bleached oats 

 although, of course, the oats are not of the same character as those 

 which have not been damaged and it is claimed by some that the 

 germination power of the oat is destroyed by bleaching. 



I wish to call your attention also to the fact that some of the cot- 

 tonseed meals being offered for sale this year, are not of as high a 

 protein content as has usually been the case. This condition has 

 been caused by the presence of more hulls in the meal than usual. 

 It seems that because of the war abroad, there has been a big demand 

 for lint which formerly brought^ about 2 cents per pound which now 

 is being sold at about 7 cents per pound. This means that the man- 

 ufacturers are cleaning all the lint they possibly can off the hulls 

 which makes it difficult to separate as much of the bulls from the 

 meal as could be done before the lint was removed. Where such 

 meals are running low in protein, and contain excessive amount of 

 cottonseed hulls, the I>ei)artnieut lias insisted that tiiey be sold as a 

 cotton seed feed. It would be well, when purchasing this product for 

 you to have samples analyzed in our Laboratory, if you have any 

 doubt that the guarantees will not be met. 



A large proportion of the feed found on our markets consists of 

 molasses feeds and chicken feeds. A claim is made by a reliable 

 authority that at least 2 million tons of molasses feeds were sold in 

 the United States last year. These feeds are of a better grade than 

 have ever been sold before in the State and are improving from year 

 to year. As is well known, they are made up of various by-products 

 to which molasses has been added. In many cases the main ingre- 

 dient used is grain screenings meal. This material is finely ground 

 and pulverized until it resembles flour in its fineness and the pul- 

 verizing process destroys any whole weed seeds which might be 

 present. 



The chicken feeds, judging from the samples examined in our 

 Laboratory, are of a better grade than ever before, as they do not ap- 

 pear to contain such quantities of weed seeds which the law prohib- 

 its. Many of these feeds are composed of the second and third grade 

 cereal grains which are not used for making flour. The fact that the 

 quality of the feeds being sold has improved, has made it unnecessary 

 to bring but a few prosecutions during the last year. This situation 

 is gratifying to us. From this information it will be apparent that 

 this line of work which the Department is doing is of greater impor- 

 tance than usually can be realized or learned. It requires constant 

 care on the part of our laboratory force to watch out for adulterants 

 and violations and only scientific men carefully trained can be trusted 

 with this work. 



This brings me to a subject of vital importance to all those inter- 

 ested in this work, that is the needs of our Department for the proper 

 enforcement of the Feeding Stuffs Law. 



At the last session of the Legislature our appropriation for this 

 work was reduced one-third of what we had been receiving and this 

 reduction did not permit us to make any advancement forward in the 

 line of special investigations and has made it impossible for us to 

 investigate all cases properly where complaints are made. We are 

 also called upon to show an exhibit of feeding stuffs to the various 

 fairs, from time to time, and we have not been able to do this in all 



