12 BETTER DAIRY FARMING 



who is making money. The farmer cannot raise the kino! of feeds 

 which will give him enough protein, so buying feeds is largely a 

 case of buying this nutrient. The selection of feeds to go with his 

 home-grown materials so as to get enough protein into his mixture 

 as cheaply as possible is thus the thing he should think of most. In 

 discussing the choosing of mixtures according to the roughage we 

 will show what the protein content ought to be, and give a list of 

 feeds classified according to the amount of protein they furnish. (27) 



26. Digestibility. — Of course, the ration must be made up of 

 digestible materials. The cow gets no value out of her feed if she 

 cannot digest it. We will not attempt here to classify feeds accord- 

 ing to their digestibility, but the reader may consider that all the 

 feeds and rations we list in this chapter are satisfactory as regards 

 this point. (Appendix, table I) 



27. Cost. — All through our discussion we have mentioned the 

 matter of cost. This is the most important part of all to the 

 majority of farmers. If a man has the right kind of cows he can 

 afford to give them all they can eat of the best feeds. Even so, he 

 will save much on his feed bill by noting the relative cost of these 

 best feeds, for at all times some are relatively cheap and others 

 high. The true cost of a feed can only be measured by the milk it 

 puts in the pail. Cheap feeds which are so low in protein, so high 

 in fiber and so indigestible that the cow gets little out of them to 

 make milk are the most expensive of all. 



With the above things in mind we are now ready to select 

 specific grain mixtures to go with the home-grown feeds. For this 

 purpose we will use the following list in which the common feeds 

 are given according to their protein content. 



High-Protein Feeds Medium-Protein Feeds 



(23 per cent or more) (12 per cent to 23 per cent) 



Linseed oil meal Wheat bran 



Cottonseed meal Cocoanut oil meal 



Distillers' dried grains Standard wheat middlings 



Gluten meal Wheat mixed feed 



Gluten feed Germ oil meal 



Buckwheat middlings Barley feed 



