188 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



Manufactured at (the wholesale cost of the drugs) $1.65, or $1.50 per 

 hundred pounds. Probably no stock food manufactured costs the maker 

 less than this, and not one costs the maker more than the "Rural Condi- 

 tion Powders," quoted from Merk's Report. Between these two prices falls 

 the cost of manufacturing the bulk of stock foods and tonics offered to the 

 farmer. 



If the farmer substituted 8 pounds of ginger for the cream tartar in 

 the formula for "Rural Condition Powders," and 4 pounds of cayenne 

 pepper for the antimony, added 20 pounds of powdered charcoal, 20 

 pounds of common salt, and 100 pounds of bran, he would have a mixture 

 so near to the average stock food that neither he nor his stock could tell 

 the difference. After paying the druggist 50 per cent profit on the ingredi- 

 ents, this mixture would still cost only $4.42 per hundred pounds. 



A tablespoonful of such mixture fed night and morning would not 

 put his stock on the market in thirty days less time, nor would it double 

 the flow of milk of his dairy herd; neither would it prevent hog cholera, 

 abortion, roup in chickens, nor glanders in horses. It is yet to be proven 

 that any stock food or tonic will do this. The feeding of domestic animals 

 is and always will be a matter of applied common sense, and will never 

 be amenable to hokus-pokus gullery. But such a stock food would have 

 the merit of being extremely inexpensive, besides having as much merit 

 in other ways as any of its class. 



STOCK FOODS ARE NOT OF UNIFORM COMPCSITIOX. 



The following tables of regular feeding-stuff analyses made of the 

 stock foods and tonics sent to the chemical section laboratory show great 

 variation in the proximate constituents present. These analyses demon- 

 strate the fact that the proportions in which the drugs and other sub- 

 stances are mixed are not uniform and that these mixtures are neither 

 standard nor homogenous. This being true, the feeder when using one 

 lot of some of these mixtures will be giving a certain dose, when using 

 a lot sold under the same name, but of later make will be giving another 

 dose. The cause for this is that Instead of being "scientifically blended 

 compounds" most of these substances are merely mechanical mixtures of 

 great variability of composition. 



COMMOX SALT IX STOCK PREPARATIOXS. 



One of the most interesting features of the tables which follow is the 

 amounts of common salt these products contain. The salt ranges from one 

 pound to over eighty-five pounds in each one hundred pounds of mixture. 

 This explains why stock relish these compounds and, after having once 

 tasted them, are eager for more. 



PROXIMATE COMPCSITIOX OF STOCK FOODS AXD TONICS. 



The tables that conclude this bulletin give the proximate composition 

 of all stock foods and tonics we have examined. The percentages of 

 common salt will be found in the last column. 



