APPLES FOR COWS 



VALUABLE FOOD IF (4IVEX IN PROPER QUANTITIES. 



ONLY a few farmers fully appreciate 

 the value of apples as a feed for 

 cows. Some will even tell you they " dry 

 cows up." This erroneous notion has pro- 

 bably been formed by their cows breaking 

 into their orchards, and, being very fond of 

 apples and hungry and not having the fear 

 of dyspepsia and diarrhoea before their eyes, 

 gorged themselves nearly to the bursting, 

 point, cloyed their appetites for a day or two, 

 and brought on the scours. The fault was 

 not in the apples but in the gormandizing. 

 Should these same cows get at the meal box 

 or the grain bin, they would injure them- 

 selves as badly as when foundered on apples. 

 A writer in an exchange says he has always 

 fed them to cows giving milk, and always 

 with good results. They are worth more 

 to feed to cows than when made into cider. 

 He proved the value of apples as food for 

 cows by actual experiment. As soon as 

 they begin to fall they were picked up and 

 drawn to the barn and fed. About four 

 quarts were given to each cow for the first 

 few feeds, vmtil the animals became accus- 

 tomed to them ; then the quantity was grad- 

 ually increased to a peck twice a day. Pre- 

 vious to beginning the feeding of apples, the 

 cows had been receiving a four-quart ration 

 (four pounds three ounces) of mill feed, 

 then selling at $i.8o a hundred weight. 

 With one-half of the mill feed taken away 

 and a peck of apples substituted in its place, 

 there was no falling off in quantity of milk 

 produced, nor in the quantity of cream, as 

 determined by the scale of the Cooley cans, 

 and the color of the cream indicated that it 

 was as rich in butter fat as formerly. The 

 ration of mill feed was worth 7^ cents, one- 

 half saved by feeding a peck of apples — 3^ 

 cents. Call it 3>4 cents: then a bushel '»f 



apples in the barn was worth 14 cents cash 

 to feed to cows. He paid boys about a 

 penny a bushel for picking them up. 



B. F. Thorpe, in Hoard's Dairyman, says 

 of a successful dairyman in New Jersey: 

 " His windfalls and inferior apples and root 

 trimmings from vegetable garden, that are 

 valuable for relishes for his cows, find their 

 way to their mangers, and figure to a greater 

 extent in the year's total production than the 

 novice w^ould suppose." A bulletin recently 

 issued from the Vermont Experiment Sta- 

 tion says that the experience of four years 

 of feeding apple pomace to twenty cows 

 proves " that it is nearly equivalent in feed- 

 ing value to corn silage," and " cows con- 

 tinuously and heartily fed have not shrunk, 

 but, on the contrary, have held up their milk 

 flows remarkably well. Fifteen pounds of 

 pomace to a cow have been fed daily with 

 entire satisfaction." 



The value of apples w^as still greater when 

 fed to hogs than when fed to cows. I fed 

 a bushel of apples to a small lot of hogs *n 

 the morning, when their appetites were 

 good, and they were all eaten before noon. 

 At noon they were fed three pecks of mill 

 feed, and when they had eaten it up clean 

 they were given another bushel of apples, 

 and at dark three pecks of mill feed. The 

 two feeds of ground grain weighed fifty-one 

 pounds, and were worth at that time 91 

 cents. It is not easy to fix the exact value 

 of the apples, because it is not certain that 

 the hogs fattened as fast when more than 

 half their diet was apples as they would have 

 done had their feed been all ground grain. 

 Apparently, they fattened as fast aS my hogs 

 ever did when their ration was wholly 

 ground grain, and when killed were found 

 well fattened. I know by trial that without 



