128 FEEDS AND FEEDING, ABRIDGED 



In recent years the bleaching of low-grade oats and barley with 

 sulfurous acid fumes to whiten the grain has become common. Such 

 grain should be avoided, as it injures the health of animals so fed. 



Oat by-products. — In the manufacture of oatmeal and other break- 

 fast foods, after the light-weight grains are screened out, the oat hulls 

 are removed from the remainder, a vast quantity resulting. So com- 

 pletely are the kernels separated that the chaff-like hulls, which con- 

 tain about 30 per ct. fiber, are worth but little, if any, more than oat 

 straw as a feed. If fragments of the kernels adhere, their value is of 

 course thereby improved. The hulls are used in the manufacture of 

 various proprietary feeds. The addition of a limited amount of hulls 

 to a mixture of heavy concentrates may be beneficial. However, in 

 buying mixed feeds one should not pay as muc"h for a low-grade feed, 

 consisting largely of oat hulls, as for high-grade concentrates. 



After the oats are hulled, they are freed from the small hairs on the 

 outer end of the kernel. With fragments of the kernels these hairs 

 form the product called oat dust, vrhich contains considerable protein 

 and fat, with about 18 per ct. fiber. This feed is usually sold in mix- 

 tures with other concentrates, as its light, fluffy nature makes it unsuit- 

 able to feed alone. This product is worth somewhat more than a mix- 

 ture of equal parts of oat middlings and oat hulls. Oat shorts or 

 middlings, consisting of the outside skins of the kernels, closely 

 resemble wheat bran in composition, but carry more fat. Oat feeds 

 are mixtures, varying widely in composition, of ground oat hulls, oat 

 middlings, and other by-products ; they should be purchased only on 

 guarantee of composition and from reputable dealers. The fiber con- 

 tent of any lot indicates the relative amount of hulls contained. 

 Clipped oat ty-product, or oat clippings, is the by-product obtained in 

 the manufacture of clipped oats. This material, which consists of 

 chaffy material broken from the ends of the hulls, empty hulls, light 

 immature oats, and dust, is used in various proprietary feeds. 



Ground corn and oats. — This feed, variously called ground corn 

 and oats, ground feed, and provender, is extensively employed in the 

 eastern and southern states for feeding horses and dairy cows. In 

 composition it ranges from a straight mixture of good-grade corn and 

 oats to one containing a large proportion of low-grade materials, such 

 as oat hulls and ground corn cobs. The best guide to the purity of this 

 feed is the fiber content ; when it contains over 7 per ct. fiber, it either 

 has been adulterated or was made from poor-quality oats. 



IV. Barley and Its By-Products in Brev^ing 

 Barley is the most widely cultivated of the cereals, growing in 

 Alaska and flourishing beside orange groves in California. Once the 



