100 



a success, it may work a revolution in this section, as thousands of tons 

 of cotton-seed are exported annually to England, and the supply of the 

 pear is simply inexhaustible. The feeding of the pear need in no way 

 diminish the supply, as whenever a piece of leaf is kept on the ground 

 it takes root and makes another plant, growing rapidly. Corn is always 

 high, and can never be transported here for stock-feed and the stock 

 be shipped back again over the same road with a certainty of success. 

 The utilizing of prickly pear and cotton-seed meal will make beef-rais- 

 ing, as well as breeding, profitable in this portion of the country, and 

 make the ranchmen entirely independent of all other sections. 



Dr. Carothers, above mentioned, writes, March, 1887 : 



In pursuance of a correspondence had with your Department last summer, begun 

 by Mr. A. J. Dull, of Harrisburg, Pa., who lias cattle interests in this State, I have 

 fed four hundred beeves, and am now feeding eight hundred more, on this food. From 

 the analysis furnished by Mr. Richardson of your Department, I found that the cac- 

 tus was deficient in albuminoids, and from the well-known richness of the cotton- 

 seed oil cakes in these elements, I selected it to supply the deficiency, which it did 

 very well. At first I burned the thorns off the cactus, then cut it up by a machine 

 which I devised, and spread it in large troughs, scattering the cotton-seed meal over 

 it, when the cattle ate it with great avidity. I soon found, however, that the burn- 

 ing was injurious, as it was impossible to conduct it without cooking the cactus to a 

 greater or less extent, which caused purging in the animals. To remedy this, i. e., 

 to destroy the thorn without scorching, I took advantage of the botanical fact that 

 the thorns of 02>untia Engelmanni, the only one I use, are set at an angle of about 60 

 degrees backward to the plane of the leaf, and that a cut of half an inch would strike 

 every one of them. I therefore set the knives of my machine to a half-inch cut, and 

 find that when cut in this manner cattle eat it fully as well as when scorched, with 

 none of the unpleasant results referred to. I feed per head about 60 pounds of the 

 cactus and an average of about 6 pounds of the meal per day for ninety days. A 

 train-load of three hundred and thirty head of these cattle sold last week in Chicago 

 at 4 cents per pound. The meat is singularly juicy and tender, the fat well distrib- 

 uted among the muscles. I have sold it at 1 cent per pound gross over grass cattle in 

 San Antonio. 



John C. Chesley, Hamilton, Hamilton County, central Texas : 



The prickly pear is used here to a great extent. We have a ranch in Stephens County 

 where we are now feeding the pear to over a hundred of our poorest cattle, and they 

 are doing well on it. It is fed at nearly all of the ranches of Stephens County where 

 they are feeding at all, and there are thousands of cattle being fed this winter on 

 prickly pear that are doing well and will come to grass in good shape that would 

 otherwise have died, or at least the larger part of them. 



The pear should be cut and hauled to the feed-lots while the sap is in the roots, or 

 before the warm days come, for if it is fed when the sap is in the tops it is liable to 

 cause laxness and weaken the animals. We prepare it for feeding by holding it for a 

 moment over a blaze. I believe that in the southern part of the State they have a 

 burner with which they burn off the prickles without cutting the plants from the 

 ground, and then let the cattle eat them as they please, but we prefer to cut and feed 

 as above stated. One good man can prepare the cactus and feed about a hundred 

 head of cattle in this way. A poor or half-starved animal should be fed only a small 

 quantity of it at first, which may be gradually increased until the animal is allowed 

 to cat all it wants. When fed in this manner to range-cattle we have never known 

 any injurious results. But if it is fed to steers, and they are worked immediately af- 

 terwards, even if the feed is small and they are accustomed to it, they are liable to 



