MISCELLANEOUS CONCENTRATES 191 



286. Miscellaneous by-products. Cocoa shells, the by-product of the 

 manufacture of cocoa and chocolate, consist of the hard outside coating 

 of the cocoa bean. These shells, which are dark brown and brittle, 

 are used in a few mixed feeds. Only 4 to 18 per ct. of the crude pro- 

 tein in this material is digestible. Lindsey and Smith of the Massa- 

 chusetts Station 17 consider cocoa shells worth not more than half as 

 much as corn meal. 



Ivory nuts, or vegetable ivory, the nuts of the palm-like Phytelepas 

 macrocarpa, are manufactured into buttons and the residue is ground 

 fine to form ivory nut meal. This consists chiefly of mannan, one of 

 the less common carbohydrates. Beals and Lindsey at the Massachu- 

 setts Station 18 found this material quite digestible but not worth as 

 much as corn meal. 



Palmo midds is a by-product of the manufacture of tin plate. In 

 preparing the tin plate for the market the excess of oil on the plate is 

 removed by scouring it with wheat middlings (often containing some 

 ground wheat screenings) . This mixture of middlings and oil is sold as 

 palmo midds. It was considered slightly superior to wheat middlings 

 in a trial by Skinner and Starr at the Indiana Station. 19 



287. Salvage grain. Grain damaged by fire, smoke, or water in ware- 

 house fires is known as salvage grain. Its value depends on how much 

 it is damaged and on the amount of screenings present. 



288. Proprietary and mixed feeds. There are now on the market a host 

 of mixed feeds, chiefly sold under proprietary names. Their compo- 

 sition differs widely, some containing only high-grade concentrates like 

 wheat bran, cottonseed meal, malt sprouts, gluten feed, etc. Others 

 contain more or less screenings or light-weight grain, which will in 

 general be of lower value than good-quality grain. Many of these feeds 

 contain such low-grade by-products as oat hulls, ground corn cobs, flax 

 plant by-products, etc., and some consist largely of such material. Altho 

 the percentages of crude protein, fat, and fiber in any given brand are 

 usually kept at the same figure from month to month, the amounts of 

 the separate ingredients in the feed are seldom guaranteed. Thus the 

 feed put out this year under a certain proprietary name may not be 

 the same as that sold next year under the same name and guarantee. For 

 this reason few trials to determine the value of these mixtures have been 

 conducted by the experiment stations. 



Many mixed feeds are the result of honest and intelligent efforts to 

 furnish a ready-mixed, " balanced " concentrate mixture for the vari- 

 ous classes of farm animals. Such have won good reputations among 

 intelligent feeders. Others are merely attempts to delude the pur- 

 chaser into paying as much for mixtures of low-grade, trashy by-pro- 

 ducts as high-class concentrates would cost. All mixed feeds should be 

 purchased not on the strength of a " fancy" name, but on the guarantee 

 of the amounts of crude protein, fat, and fiber present in the mixture. 



1T Mass. Bui. 158. "Journ. Agr. Res. 7, 1916, pp. 301-20. "Ind. Bui. 219. 



