1890.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 33. 105 



meal and wheat bran were chosen, for various reasons, to 

 serve in connection with corn meal to furnish the additional 

 ingredients of the diet, as soon as our milk supply became 

 exhausted. This course promised to serve two distinct 

 purposes : — 



1. The rich nitrogenous character of gluten meal and 

 of wheat bran offered a chance to secure any desired change 

 in the nutritive character of the feed, as far as the relative 

 proportion of the digestible nitrogenous and non-nitrogenous 

 food constituents are concerned ; and 



2. To reduce the net cost of the feed, in case they 

 proved to be an efficient substitute for larger quantities of 

 corn meal, on account of the larger quantities of certain 

 essential fertilizing constituents they contain. 



The statement that an addition of gluten meal or of wheat 

 bran or both, to a diet which previously consisted only of 

 skim-milk and corn meal, tends to increase the commercial 

 value of the manurial refuse resulting, is based on the fol- 

 lowing considerations : — 



1. The principal fertilizing elements contained in a 

 mixture of equal parts of gluten meal and wheat bran have 

 a higher market value than those contained in an equal 

 weight of corn meal. 



2. It is admissible, for mere practical purposes, to 

 assume that, in raising one and the same kind of animals 

 to a corresponding weight, a corresponding amount of 

 nitrogen, of phosphoric acid, of potassium oxide, etc., 

 will be retained and stored up in the growing animal. 



An excess, therefore, of any or of all of the three essen- 

 tial fertilizing constituents previously specified, in one diet, 

 as compared with that of another one, counts in favor of 

 that particular diet as far as net cost of feed is concerned. 

 Although it must be acknowledoed that, even in one and 

 the same feeding experiment, most likely no two animals 

 would show strictly corresponding relations in that direc- 

 tion, it remains not less true that it is a most commendable 

 practice, in a general farm management, to consider care- 

 fully the relative value of the fertilizing constituents 

 contained in the various fodder articles which present 

 themselves for our choice in the compounding of suitable 



