NINTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 315 
Few men realize the actual food value of an acre of our Iowa corn 
when it stands in the field fully matured, when the ear is ripe and when 
the shell and pith of the stock is filled with digestible and nutritious 
moisture, if it is put into a silo and kept in that condition for winter 
feed. By its use the cost of producing milk can be reduced one-third and 
we are producing beef on two-year old steers today for less than five cents 
per pound and it is costing some of our neighbors, feeding corn the old 
way, close to ten cents per pound. Some men are afraid of the silo be- 
cause they have read that corn ensilage is not a balanced ration and I 
don't think they know any more about a balanced ration than I do, and I 
don't know anything about it at all; and our observation is that more 
cows suffer from a lack of sufficient ration than suffer from not having 
this ration properly balanced. The first step in economy is to save an 
abund3,nce of cheap succulent feed which grows on our Iowa farms 
every year. Balance this with, clover or alfalfa grown on the farm. If 
we buy a ton of protein from the feed man we have the feed and he has 
the money, but if we grow a ton of protein on our farm we have the feed 
and the money both. 
We have very few dairymen in Iowa, but we have lots of men who are 
keeping and milking some cows, not only for the income they get from 
their cows but for that and for the purpose of stocking their farms with 
young growing stock. These men own large farms and the question of 
farm labor is such that it is impossible for them to go into intensive 
dairying. But we think that with proper methods of feeding they can 
continue to keep what they are pleased to call their dual purpose cows 
and continue to stock their farms with well bred young stock. "We have 
read some well written articles showing that it was not possible to grow 
beef any more on our Iowa farms. We have talked with several farmers 
in the past month that sold beef cattle on the Chicago market above 7i/^ 
cents per pound and they said the cattle lost them money. We have seen 
in the last thirty days thrifty young hogs go begging for buyers at public 
sale at much less than the market price, simply because the farmers 
present had failed to provide some cheaper feed than sixty cent corn 
with which to carry their own hogs through the winter till grazing time 
next spring. The cost of feed enters just as largely into the cost of pro- 
ducing beef and pork as it does into the cost of producing milk and 
butter. We are told that the average cow of Iowa only produces 140 
pounds of butter per year. This, at 25 cents per pound, would be $35.00 
per* year. We are also told that it costs $35.00 to feed the average cow 
one year. We have simply made an even trade. We have traded our 
feed to our cows for butter-fat. We have sold the butter-fat for cash and 
have our farms the richer from having our feed eaten on the farm. And 
we think this is better than selling the crop because when we come to 
selling the crop that we generally feed to our cows we would find a large 
part of it unmarketable and our farms would be the poorer from selling 
the crop off the farm. So we think we are still ahead if our cows do 
pay even on paper. 
Before we go at it to change these conditions would it not be well 
first for us to determine whether the trouble lies entirely with the poor 
