130 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



DISCUSSION ON CATTLE FEEDING. 



The President: Mr. Chas. Escher, Jr., who is a prominent 

 cattle feeder and possibly has as great a reputation in that line as 

 any man in the state, is on the program for an address on ' ' Cattle 

 Feeding, ' ' but he is unable to be here and so informed Mr. Wallace. 

 So we will have a general discussion on that subject for a little 

 while. I will call on 'Sir. Parsons of Rockwell to start this dis- 

 cussion. 



Mr. Parsons : I have not fed any cattle for about three years, 

 but I spent forty-one years of my life in active farming and fed 

 more or less cattle the greater part of that time. You will readil\ 

 see that my experience in that line belongs to the age that has gone 

 by. I Avas an early settler in the northern part of the state, and 

 we had free pasture and consequently fed largely on the old system; 

 but the last few years I did feed I began to investigate the value of 

 using feed stuffs with my cattle. The cost of freight, from the 

 fact that I had to ship it in local lots, made it seem to be unprofit- 

 able. I then got a grinder and undertook to grind my corn, and 

 tried to save some feed in that wayj but after trying for two years 

 along that line I decided that the cheapest beef that I could produce 

 was by feeding first on fodder (I was a winter feeder as a rule), 

 and then feed snap corn later, and when the pasture entirely 

 failed and the corn became old, feed in the middle of the day all of 

 the clear clover hay that they would eat up in about an liour. I 

 aimed to have them always eat all the clover hay out of the rack. 

 The rest of the time I fed them on wild hay and good stravv*. The 

 last two or three years that I fed I undertook to ship in alfalfa, 

 but I couldn't see that I got any better results from that than 

 from my clover hay. The last year that I fed, when I was on my 

 way to Chicago with some other stock men, they said they were 

 feeding molasses. After I had fed the snap corn and gone to the 

 ear corn, their mouths got tender and I had to feed the shelled corn. 

 The last year I shipped in some molasses, and I befieve if I liad 

 continued to feed I would have started in as I did, fed the clover 

 hay at noon (it seemed to balance up the corn), and then bought 

 cheap molasses and sprinkled on the slielled corn to finish my 

 cattle. 



Mr. Murray : I generally feed from 100 to 200 head each year, 

 and I am a late feeder. I feed as much snap corn as possible — 

 start them on it and keep them on it just as long as I can. The 



