THE COST OF THE RATION 1 15 



management to buy timothy hay, and yet this prac- 

 tice prevails in many parts of the country. It is not 

 economical feeding. There is no special virtue in 

 timothy hay. A feeding stuff is valuable only in pro- 

 portion to its ability to furnish protein, carbohy- 

 drates and fat. Why buy timothy hay when it is 

 little better than corn stover as a feed ? Grow plenty 

 of corn and the legumes, and you need not bother 

 about timothy hay. The good farmer and the wise 

 feeder aims to have some legume crop at all times. 



Grow the Legumes. Cowpeas and clovers and 

 alfalfa are needed, not only to catch nitrogen out of 

 the air and store it in the soil so as to maintain the 

 fertility of the land, and add humus thereto, but 

 they are needed as feed for cattle and sheep and hogs 

 and horses. Many feeding experiments have shown 

 that in feeding value, either of these three feeds is 

 not much less than wheat bran. 



Many farmers do not grow wheat, yet they buy 

 wheat bran for the protein it contains, because they 

 look upon wheat bran as a valuable feeding stuff. 

 And it is ; but, in addition to being good, it is also 

 costly. It takes money from the pocket. Still, if a 

 man could sow ten acres or more each year to a crop 

 of wheat bran, and if he could sow the wheat bran 

 just as he can now sow cowpeas or alfalfa or clover, 

 and if he could get two tons or more of bran an acre, 

 the practice would become general throughout the 

 country. And why? Because every farmer has 

 learned of the value of wheat bran as a feed. But if 

 alfalfa and cowpeas and clover are almost as good 

 as wheat bran for all feeding purposes, why refrain 



