292 missouri agricultural report. 



Missouri's great advantages. 



In regard to feed tlie State of Missouri is in a position where she 

 can produce milk vcr}^ economically. She has the corn, she has the 

 rich soil where she can raise quantities of hay or fodder corn. She is 

 near to the South where they have cotton seed meal or she can have 

 the gluten meal from the glucose sugar refining companies with which 

 to balance the ration. I know of no state in the Union that is able to 

 produce milk any cheaper than the State of Missouri. With us in Min- 

 nesota feed stuffs are a little more expensive, but here corn is cheaper 

 and you are raising large crops of it, and your ration can be balanced, 

 as I said before, with gluten feed or cotton seed meal, while we have 

 to use oil meal, which is a little more expensive. 



COST UF FEED. 



Now the first three weeks in January I made calculations in regard 

 to the cost of the feed consumed by each cow in the herd and the. average 

 daily board bill was I2}4 cents per cow, charging the cows 40 cents a 

 bushel for corn, 38 cents a bushel for barley, 26 cents a bushel for outs, 

 ^22 a ton for oil meal; $2 a ton for silage and $7 a ton for hay. The 

 average daily yield of butter fat was 1.2 pounds; the butter fat weight 

 was 20 cents a pound, which makes the butter fat alone worth 24 cents 

 per day per cow, with a daily cost of feeding of 12^ cents. Now this 

 covers a herd of about 35 cows and is the average result for the first 

 three weeks in January, The reason I selected the first three weeks in 

 January is because that was the middle of winter. Silage feeding with 

 us in Minnesota commences the first week in October and it ends the 

 first week in May, so I calculated that if I ascertained the cost of the 

 daily ration during these three weeks and the yield that I got during 

 that time, that it would be the average for the winter, and that means 

 that for 123^ cents' worth of feed per day, my cows will return me 24 

 cents' worth of butter fat. 



DISCUSSION — cow tif:s. 



Mr. What do you tie your cows with ? 



Mr. Haecker — I do not tie them. I ])ut a rope behind them, run- 

 ning from one partition to the other. It is fastened with a knot, staple 

 and hook, then another staple an<l hook and when the cow goes out the 

 rope is unhooked, turned and she passes out lengthwise. 



