250 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Question. How high may it be and still be called a 

 cheap food ? 



Mr. SANBOEiSr. It depends upon the fluctuations of other 

 products. Hay and other crops are higher than usual this 

 year ; cotton-seed meal rises and falls with the other things : 

 and you want to keep that ratio. At twenty-five or thirty 

 dollars a ton, I would rather buy it than any other material 

 I know of. Fish is usually forty-five or fifty dollars a ton : 

 I think I paid fifty for that I bought. I should prefer to 

 buy cotton-seed now than to buy fish, although I should con- 

 sider fish would be profitable food to put with coarse fodder. 

 I may say, that, in those experiments that I made, there were 

 tests of cotton-seed meal against oil-cake, bran, and other 

 foods. The new-process oil-meal has given me the most un- 

 satisfactory results. 



Dr. Wakefield. Is there any difference as to the amount 

 of labor required to get cattle to eat either cotton-seed meal 

 or fish ? 



Mr. Sanborn. There is no great labor involved. You 

 stir the fish up with a shovel in their meal until they learn 

 to eat it, and then put in a little more, until you get them 

 to eat all you desire. 



Mr. Geinxell. How does the new-process oil-meal com- 

 pare with other feeding-materials ? 



Mr. Sanborx. Theoretically it should be good food ; prac- 

 tically, when I tried it, it did not give me so good a result as 

 I got from cotton-seed meal. The result, on the whole, was 

 unsatisfactory. 



Mr. Grinnell. Do you know what the preparation is ? 



Mr. Sanborn. The oil has been extracted down to about 

 three per cent. 



Question. Do you consider it harmful to cattle ? 



Mr. Sanborn. No, sir. I fed mine for a term of one 

 hundred days. The simple fact was, that they did not do 

 so well when fed with that as they did with other combina- 

 tions. They consumed nineteen pounds of straw and six 

 pounds of oil-meal per pair, and they grew constantly during 

 the period. 



Question. You have, perhaps, convinced us that we 

 should abandon the raising of hay-crops, and turn our atten- 

 tion to raising grain-crops. You have shown us how much 



