No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 443 



home raised food with materials of a highly nitrogenous character, 

 it is necessary to purchase standard articles like cottonseed and lin- 

 seed meals, brewers' and distillers' grains, gluten meal and feed, 

 wheat bran, middlings and other by-products. 



Feeds of this nature will continue to occupy a place in the ration 

 for dairy animals as they have in the past. At the same time, the 

 consumer is beset on every hand with new feeding stuffs — new in 

 name if not in kind. As the result of the close competition between 

 manufacturers and the more complete utilization of by-products, 

 especially those from the manufacture of breakfast foods, we find 

 on the market a large number of cheap articles, goods which have 

 been adulterated or in which low-grade materials have been used in 

 the place of standard articles. 



Right here we insert a word of caution in regard to purchasing 

 such materials as "oat feeds,'' "corn and oat feeds," "mixed feeds," 

 certain kinds of "chop," etc., in which we find a large proportion of 

 light oats and oat hulls. 



The feeding value of the above mentioned articles decreases ac- 

 cording to the extent of the adulteration with oat hulls, although, 

 as a rule, the retail prices are practically the same as the price of 

 a mixture of corn and oats. Oat hulls contain on the average 30 

 per cent, of crude fibre, which in most feeding stuffs is of no more 

 value to dairy animals than saw dust. It is, to be sure, broken down 

 to some extent by the animal and yields up a certain amount of 

 its force in the form of heat, but a feed having a high fibre content 

 contains less of the valuable food materials in a more difficultly di- 

 gestible condition than if the feed contained a small or moderate 

 percentage of fibre. 



There are many oat feeds on the market which contain from 2.5 

 to 30 per cent, of crude fibre and 6 per cent, of crude protein, which 

 are expensive at almost any price, and we desire to emphasize the 

 fact that as long as the farmer can raise plenty of corn, oats and hay, 

 he cannot afford to purchase any feeding stuffs containing less than 

 lA per cent, of crude protein. 



Protein is a term which includes all the nitrogenous compounds 

 of a f^ed, regardless of their nature. In everyday life we deal with 

 materials which resemble protein substances, namely, white of egg, 

 casein of milk, lean meat, gelatin, etc., and the animal uses the pro- 

 tein of the food to make these important substances, to restore the 

 waste of tissues and muscles, which occurs at all time, and also uses 

 it to form flesh. Protein is a very necessary ingredient for the 

 farmer to purchase. As protein builds up the animal, so do the 

 carbo-hydrates — sugars, starches and fats — furnish the fuel to keep 

 the animal mechanism in good working condition. 



Probably the most popular of all commercial feeding stuffs are the 

 offal from wheat in the manufacture of flour. They consist of par- 

 ticular portions of the wheat kernel and are represented on the mar- 

 ket by the bran, middlings, bran and middlings mixed and "red dog" 

 flour. The quality of wheat by-products found on the market at the 

 present time is very good. Samples secured in the open market 

 during 1906 show a high percentage of protein and fat, a state of 

 affairs which did not exist one year ago. The most common 

 adulterant of wheat bran at the present time is probably ground 

 corn cob. This finely ground material is sometimes mixed with bran 



