294 



STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



weighing 50 grams, 7 millimeters in diameter and 203 millimeters long 

 dropped two meters. The distance the end of this rod penetrates the but- 

 ter measures its softness. The farther the rod penetrates the softer the 

 butter. 



Composition of Butter from Dry Feed and from Potatoes. 



I Dry food 



IV Dry food 



Mangolds 



Ill Potatoes 



V Potatoes 



Average potatoes 

 Average dry food. 



Hard- 

 ness, 

 m. m. 



18.7 

 15.3 

 16.7 

 18.7 

 12.3 

 15.5 

 17.00 



Potatoes did not constitute an abnormal proportion of the ration and 

 no important difference is noted in the composition of the butter that 

 could be ascribed to the potatoes. In one case the butter was much 

 harder where the cows had the potatoes, in another it was as soft as when 

 the cows were on dry feed. The per cent of volatile fatty acids, the ingre- 

 dients that give butter its characteristic flavor, was slightly higher on the 

 average in the potato butter than in the butter from dry feed. 



Corn Meal. — Corn meal has been an ingredient of nearly every grain 

 mixture fed the college dairy cows for the past three winters, and this 

 notwithstanding the fact that silage has formed the bulk of the ration. 

 At the ordinary market prices it furnishes digestible nutrients cheaper 

 than any other grain or by-product. While relatively low in protein, it 

 can be used to good advantage with clover hay and wheat bran or oats, 

 the oats or bran supplying the protein necessary to balance the ration. 

 When the corn has not been mixed with oats or bran the cob has some- 

 times been ground with the kernel to make a meal less compact and of 

 less specific gravity. Corn cobs have little feeding value, and it would 

 rarely pay the farmer to cart them to mill and pay for grinding them, 

 where he pays for the grinding by the hundred, but where the grinding 

 is done by windmill or other cheap power on the farm itself, it will pay 

 to grind the cob with the corn to act as a diluent. In such cases the cob 

 must be ground very fine. 



With silage, corn has usually been mixed with linseed or cotton seed 

 meal, bran and oats, in the proportion of two parts of corn meal to eight 

 of the other grains or by-products. Not infrequently the corn has been 

 fed the cows unhusked and with the stalks. In that case the shocks have 

 been drawn directly from the field, run through a cutting box and fed 

 with wheat bran and clover hay. A good proportion of kernels escape 

 digestion, and for the sake of economy it has been found necessary to 

 follow the cows with pigs to consume the corn in the droppings. Where 

 human labor is high in (trice and corn relatively cheap this method 

 recommends itself. 



