558 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



FEEDING INTELLIGENTLY. 



Miss Witter, Professor of Domestic Science, Iowa State College, Before the 

 Story County Farmers'' Institute . 



Those of us who know anything about the feeding of cattle through Iowa 

 and all through this western country, know that when a man plans to feed 

 his cattle he estimates what money he can make out of them; and the 

 first thing he does is to see that he keeps his cattle healthy and well. 



He knows that steers will not grow and bring money for him unless he 

 gives them good food; and the more food he can get into them and have 

 that food made into energy and strength, the more money he can make. 



The first thing he does after he plans to get his stock sold, is to find out 

 the best ration he can get for that pen of hogs, calves or whatever it may be. 



Now he puts that pen of live stock to eating this balanced ration and then 

 watches them carefully. 



He may have one hundred steers in one lot. Pretty soon he finds one 

 that is not thriving; he takes it out and gives it a diflferent ration. He changes 

 its food, he plans; he works, presently he finds another that does not thrive, 

 and out of his hundred he may get ten that do not thrive on the regular 

 ration. 



Now it seems to me we ought to know as'much about our children and fam- 

 ily, and we ought to be as anxious to learn about them as the man is about his 

 cattle and pig?; and it also seems that if we plan our balanced ration which 

 has been found by scientists and investigators to be a general, good food, 

 we ought to be willing at least to try it and watch our family and see 

 whether that balanced ration is going to be better for theni than the food we 

 had used. 



If that balanced ration is not good we ought to have brains enough to 

 work out a good ration for ourselves. 



It is not true that we are machines, it is not true that we can be made to 

 work exactly like well oiled cogs and well run engines; because there are 

 individual dififerences in us and we have to watch ourselves for that very 

 reason. 



If we had been made like the sheep, with our clothes on our back and 

 our food right before us, we need have no trouble along this line. But we 

 were not. We were given brains and we were supposed to use them. I do 

 not know in what way brains tell better in the long run than in planning 

 the food for those we love. I 'do not know where food tells better than in the 

 brain of children. I know a mother who said, " My two younger children 

 will never do the work that their older brothers and sisters do, because, when 

 they were little we lived way out west for years; we almost starved, and 

 those children did not ha,ve the good wholesome food that their brothers and 

 sisters had while they were growing." This matter of feeding means a 

 great deal to us all. It means just as much to you and to me as it does to 

 somebody else in our power. 



Sometimes I think the responsibility is more for each one of us to 

 feed ourselves than to look after other people, because other people ought 

 to use their brains to know what to eat. 



