162 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



Our experience has been uniformly favorable with the use of 

 from two to four pounds of linseed meal or cottonseed meal per 

 day in connection with all of the shelled corn the steers would eat 

 when the roughage was one of these non-legume fodders. As al- 

 ready stated, the cheapest and most profitable gains have uniformly 

 been from the use of corn and some legume hay for roughage, .but 

 when the use of one of these hays is out of the question, the use of 

 a supplemental feed in winter is invariably profitable. 



A Supplement not so Much Needed in Summer Feeding — Sum- 

 mer feeding, with bluegrass and white clover as a roughage, is quite 

 different from winter feeding with such material as timothy hay, 

 prairie hay, millet or sorghum for roughage. The grass is rela- 

 tively rich in protein, and being quite palatable, it is presumed that 

 the animals eat enough of it to supply the protein required over 

 and above that which is furnished by the corn. At any rate, our 

 ten years of experiments in summer feeding with various sorts of 

 supplements have shown a very small profit over and above the feed- 

 ing of corn straight, and in a majority of cases this profit has had 

 to be found in the superior selling quality of the cattle rather than 

 in the extra gains made. These experiments have included all ages 

 of cattle, from yearlings to three year olds, and has involved a study 

 of all the common supplements. 



These definite results have come out of these experiments : 

 A large and long continued use of a supplement has proven uni- 

 formly unprofitable. That is to say, the making of the ration one- 

 fourth or one-third cottonseed meal or linseed meal throughout the 

 entire feeding period of four to seven months has shown poorer 

 financial returns than the feeding of corn straight. 



The feeding of so small a proportion of supplement as one- 

 ninth or one-eighth of the entire grain ration throughout the entire 

 feeding period has not been uniformly profitable, but has come 

 nearer paying out in all cases than the large use of supplemental 

 feeds. It does seem, however, that the feeding of a limited quantity, 

 something like two and a half to three pounds per day, of one of 

 these supplements during the last 60 or 70 days has given uniform- 

 ly satisfactory results. This amount used over this length of time 

 seems to be sufficient to put all the bloom and finish on cattle of 

 ordinary grade, over and above that which corn and blue grass will 

 supply, that it is profitable to give them. 



In summer, therefore, there is a very definite limit to the 

 profitable use of these supplements, while in winter, as has already 

 been pointed out, there is no circumstance, except with an abund- 



