EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



Vol. TX. No. 1. 



During the past winter tlie State legislatures of Maine and Massa- 

 chusetts passed acts providing for a control of the sale of concentrated 

 commercial feeding stuffs, similar in object to the fertilizer control. A 

 law which has been in force in Connecticut for more than two years 

 is considerably wider in its scope, including provisions to prevent 

 adulteration or misbranding of " every article used for food or drink by 

 man, horses, or cattle." 



The step taken by these three States commends itself from sev- 

 eral points of view, and will lie a valuable safeguard to farmers and 

 stock feeders. The variation in composition of well known feeding- 

 stuffs is very large, as will be apparent from a perusal of any of the 

 compilations of analyses. Wheat bran, for example, varies in protein 

 all the way from 12 to 10 per cent; wheat middlings, from 10 to 20 per 

 cent; wheat screenings, from S to 17 per cent, and buckwheat mid- 

 dlings, from 25 to 31 per cent. Cotton-seed meal ranges from !!."> to 50 

 per cent in protein and from 9 to 18 per cent in fat; new-process lin- 

 seed meal, from 27 to 38 per cent in protein and from 1.3 to 4.4 per cent 

 in fat; peanut meal, from 37 to 52 per cent in protein and from 6 to 18 

 per cent in fat; and the various materials sold under the name of glu- 

 ten meal have been found to vary from 21 to 39 per cent in protein and 

 from G to 20 per cent in fat. A part of this variation is due to differ- 

 ences in water content, but even on the dry-matter basis the range in 

 composition is very wide. This is but natural, since the by-products 

 are obtained from a large number of factories, and a difference or a 

 change in the process of manufacture has its effect on the composition 

 of the by-product. These feeding stuffs are usually quite expensive, 

 and the arguments for a fertilizer control apply with equal force in the 

 case of concentrated feeding stuffs. The farmer may be paying $20 per 

 ton for gluten meal with '.'>r> per cent of protein in one case, and the 

 same amount for another shipment with only 25 per cent, or even less. 

 He can not afford to take the risk in buying high-priced commercial 

 feeding stuffs by name only any more than in buying fertilizers; and if 

 in the absence of a guaranty or control he sends a sample of a feeding 

 stuff to his experiment station the chances are that the particular lot 

 sampled will be sold before the report of the analysis is received. 



Again, the«greatest confusion prevails as to the nomenclature of cer- 

 tain classes of by-products sold as feeding stuffs. A few years ago a 

 by-product in the manufacture of glucose from corn was placed upon 

 the market and soon met with a ready sale. The material varied consid- 

 erably with the process of manufacture, as noted above, and certain 

 trade names were given to the product from different factories. As a 

 result we soon had not only various brauds of "gluten meal," but also 



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