34 FEEDING FARM ANIMALS 



Cabbage. This plant is usually primarily grown as food 

 for the human family, but in some instances it is also grown 

 as food for live stock, and even when grown primarily as 

 food for the human family, the residue of leaves furnishes 

 excellent food for some classes of live stock. No kind of 

 green crop is grown over a wider area. The soil and climate, 

 however, of northwestern prairies have highest adaptation 

 for the growth of this plant. On such soils as many as 24 

 tons of heads per acre have been grown, not including a large 

 amount of leaves. The leaves may be gathered and fed to 

 live stock after the heads have been removed, or they may 

 be fed off by sheep or even by swine where they grew. In 

 some instances the entire crop is grazed down by sheep in 

 the late autumn. Cabbage furnishes excellent food for 

 some kinds of farm animals in winter, but the labor in- 

 volved in storing them is such as to make the feeding of 

 cabbage too expensive, unless when they are fed to milk 

 lambs in order to hasten their development for the market. 

 In some latitudes, however, the winters are so mild that cab- 

 bage will not take serious harm though left exposed where 

 they grew. In such instances, the leaves and soft heads 

 may be fed with profit to cows, ewes and brood sows. 



For cattle, the highest use of cabbage is found 

 in feeding them to cows for the production of milk. The 

 leaves and soft or immature heads may thus be fed 

 with satisfactory results, at least in a limited way. They 

 are excellent for stimulating milk production. The plan of 

 grazing cows on areas from which a crop of cabbage has 

 been removed is not to be commended, as such grazing is 

 likely to result in too lax a condition of the bowels, and it 

 may also result in tainting the milk, more especially when 

 decayed or partially decayed leaves are present. Such food 

 will be helpful to calves, but even for them, the results are 

 more satisfactory when the amount of cabbage or leaves 

 fed is restricted. They are seldom or never fed to cattle 

 that are being fattened. 



