t)6 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



simply at the mercy of the hog and the ravages which afflict him. If 

 cholera attacks the hog and wipes him out, about twenty-five per cent, 

 of our high priced corn is wasted except from a fertility standpoint. 

 This is a question which every farmer should study carefully. How can 

 he make beef without the hog to consume the waste feed? Not that we 

 have any objections to the dog, for he certainly is the farmers' best 

 friend, but we must be prepared for emergencies. We must feed cattle 

 oftentimes when we have no hogs. We must study more carefully the 

 process of digestion of feed stuffs. When we see from twenty to thirty 

 per cent, of the corn which a steer is made to consume passing through 

 the digestive system it is a sure indication that there is something 

 wrong. We are either feeding the animal more that it can assimilate 

 or its digestive system is out of condition. In most instances the trou- 

 ble is due to a deranged digestive system caused by over feeding. This 

 leads up to another point which is the mixing of grain and roughage 

 together which is, in our estimation, the ideal way of feeding cattle. 



When the grain is fed separately from the roughage it is greedily 

 swallowed and passes into the third and fourth stomachs of the animal, 

 thus escaping mastication and the action of the saliva of the mouth, 

 which has the power of converting starch into sugar which is digestible. 

 By mixing the grain with the roughage it will be remasticated, thus 

 much more thoroughly digested than when each is fed separately. This 

 method of feeding involves the cutting of roughage, a step which most 

 farmers are not prepared to take as yet, but one which they can well 

 afford to be thinking about as in the near future it will be practiced by 

 the rpost successful cattle feeders. 



Another question which is worthy of our attention is the silo. The 

 silo, while a new thing in Iowa, is by no means an experiment. It has 

 been thoroughly tested in the eastern states and Canada and when once 

 tried it speaks for itself. It is now considered to be indispensable on 

 the dairy farm, and while it has not been, as yet, very generally used 

 in the production of beef, the results as reported to date are most en- 

 couraging. The silo is by all odds the cheapest medium through which 

 we can obtain succulent feed for our stock during the winter months. 



In recapitulation I may say that the successful farmer of the future 

 will be the man who combines the production of first-class live stock 

 with his farming operations, who keeps beef cows for the double pur- 

 pose of producing butter and calves intended for the block, who gets 

 nearly as many pounds of gain from sixteen pounds of corn as the aver- 

 age feeder of today gets from twenty-five pounds when fed to cattle. 

 Who combines his grain with the roughage fed to his animals thereby 

 securing more complete digestion of the same, and who stores his corn 

 stalks in the silo that they may be converted into beef and dairy prod- 

 ucts instead of being burned in the fields. 



Chairman: We have a few minutes before noon and would 

 like to hear from any gentleman present. 



