EXPERIMENT STATION REPORTS. 113 



out the whole experiment, but one steer differs from another very 

 materially, not alone in the amount of feed he is able to consume, but 

 in the results that are forthcoming from the feeding of a given amount 



^ of food. One steer, from the consumption of one hundred pounds of 

 silage with a given complement of grain feed, makes five pounds of gain. 

 Another steer of the same weight and, for that matter, of the same 

 type makes but three pounds of gain from the same quantity of feed. 

 The per cent of digestibility of the different foods will be the same in 

 the two animals but the nutritive effects of the feed will be vastly 

 different. Unfortunately we h.ave no measure of the nutritive effects 

 in the two animals until the experiment itself has been tried and the 

 results noted. For these reasons it has been necessary to repeat these 

 experiments over and over for four succeeding years, and even now the 

 station hesitates to print the results lest the apparent differences are 

 due to causes which the experimenter cannot recognize, rather than to 

 the conditions which have been puri)Osely varied. 



The introduction of the industry of sugar production has brought 

 with it a supply, almost unlimited in amount, of a feeding stuff of un- 

 known value, namely, beet pulp. The investigations aiming to deter- 

 mine the value of this material in terms of other and better known 

 feeding stuffs, have been conducted during the past year, both with 

 sheep and cattle. The results are ready for publication and will appear 

 in Bulletin No. 217. It seems, to the most casual observer, unfortunate 

 that at present the bulk of the beet pulp produced in the State is either 

 wasted or shipped outside of its borders. 



r.ut one bulletin relating to the dairy industry was issued during the 

 year. This was Special Bulletin No. 21. Since Michigan is primarily 

 and justly a dairy State, the work along these lines will be further 

 developed in the future as it has been in the past. Arrangements are 

 making whereby more dairy coavs will be kept to be used partly in sta- 

 tion work for the testing of the relative values of feeding stuffs and for 

 such other investigations as time may make pertinent and valuable. 



A flock of goats was purchased early in the year to test their value 

 in clearing land of brush and also to find out something about their 



• habits when closely confined. The results have never been favorable 

 to the project of keeping Angora goats on our Michigan farms. 



The work with sugar beets was continued along much the same lines 

 as in the previous years. The series of investigations concerning the 

 proper and most i^rofitable width of rows was concluded, it being prac- 

 tically demonstrated that 24 inches would produce as heavy a tonnage 

 and as rich beets as 18 inches, thus reducing by a third the cost of 

 thinning. It was shown also that spraying would reduce the amount 

 of leaf spot, although it was not demonstrated that spraying to prevent 

 this disease was profitable. In the matter of fertilizers no definite re- 

 sults were reached nor were definite results possible. It was shown 

 that on the soils on which the experiments were tried, nitrate of soda 

 producd a profitable increase in tonnage. As far as phosphoric acid is 

 concerned some of the soils showed a lack of that ingredient, while others 

 did not. All soils seem to need potash, to at least a limited extent. 

 The injurious effect of growing beets after beets for three successive 

 years are still further demonstrated by the results of last year. In 

 15 



