126 



Feeds and Feeding. 



II. Wheat and its By-products in Milling. 

 Digestible nutrients and fertilizing constituents. 



166. Wheat grain. From the earliest times the wheat plant has 

 furnished the choicest food grain for man. Wheat has probably 

 never been degraded to stock-feeding purposes until the most 

 recent times. During the last decade, owing to enormous pro- 

 duction, the prices for this grain fell until they approached quite 

 close to those received for corn. When this anomalous and dis- 

 couraging situation was reached, our farmers at first hesitated, 

 but with a sagacity most creditable to them quickly overcame 

 their long-held and not unwarranted prejudice against this seem- 

 ing perversion of nature and began to deal out wheat in large 

 quantities to their stock. Coburn 1 reports that in Kansas, during 

 the year 1893, more than 4,000,000 bushels of wheat were fed to 

 stock by the farmers of that state, and that in 1894 the amount 

 so disposed of reached the enormous volume of 8,500,000 bushels. 

 Since it costs more to produce wheat than corn, it is reasonable 

 to suppose that this grain will never become a common feed for 

 stock, but the feeder should know its value both absolute and 

 relative, and hold himself ready to make use of it whenever 

 market conditions warrant. 



Compared with corn, wheat carries a higher percentage of 

 starch, less ether extract and more protein. Thus it more clearly 



i Kept. Kan. St. Bd. Agr., Sept. 30, 1894. 



