86 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



I have never seen anything equal to it. I find that those cattle 

 that have been fed with cotton-seed and Indian meal always 

 weigh the best, and so far as my experience goes, feeding with 

 cotton-seed meal has been a great success. I have also used it for 

 fattening sheep. I usually have about one hundred and fifty 

 sheep in the winter, and I feed them a mixture of a quarter or 

 third cotton-seed meal and the rest shelled corn. My neighbors 

 have used it as much as I have, perhaps more, and in no case 

 have I found any objection to it, except where, as Mr. Flint 

 says, unhulied cotton-seed was used. Some thought they hurt 

 their animals by using that, and they stopped at once. But 

 where the genuine hulled seed has been used, I have seen 

 no ill effects from it. • I have used from ten to fifteen tons 

 a year, and my neighbors have used it in larger quantities. 

 One of my neighbors has bought twenty tons for use this 

 winter. 



Although I have never had any trouble where the cattle 

 were fed with tliis meal, I have a neighbor who fed cotton-seed 

 meal very extensively to two cows. They were very nice cows, 

 and he kept them in a high state of flesh, feeding them as much 

 as eight or ten quarts of cotton-seed a day. The consequence 

 was, he had a great flow of milk and made a large amount of 

 butter. He claimed that he made eighteen pounds of butter a 

 week from each cow. The consequence was, that in two years, 

 he had to turn them into beef. It dried them up. They were 

 cows that took the first premium at our sliow, and one of them 

 went as high as nineteen and one-half pounds of butter a week. 

 He thought he was doing a very nice tiling that winter, but the 

 next year, he turned one of them. I a!?ked him, witii some 

 surprise, " Why do you turn that cow into beef? " He rather 

 hesitated, hung down his head, and said, " I can't do as well 

 this winter as last." " Why ? " "I guess I forced them a 

 little too hard." If he had fed his cows a reasonable quantity 

 of cotton-seed meal, say three quarts a day, with shorts or 

 Indian meal, I think his cows would have been good now. 



Mr. Smith. I will ask the gentleman a question : If he can- 

 not crowd an animal harder by feeding a mixture ? That has 

 been my^ experience. I have not experienced so much danger 

 of over-feeding or cloying an animal when I have a portion of 

 cotton-seed meal. In regard to the two cows he has mentioned, 



