74 AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. [Jan. 



Articles marked * have l)een bought in the market, or were 

 raised on the land of the station, and there can be no rea- 

 sonable doubt about fair sampling. The remainder were 

 sent on with name recorded above. 



A careful examination of the preceding partial analyses of 

 current commercial feed stuffs cannot fail to show the exist- 

 ence of most serious variation in the amount of the two most 

 costly food constituents, in case of the same hind. The differ- 

 ences noticed in that direction affect in many instances, in a 

 marked degree, the food value of the particular article as 

 well as its comparative money value. Some of these varia- 

 tions may be due to differences in the processes at the time 

 employed in the parent industry. The fact that the majority 

 of this class of feed stuffi'^ are ivaste or by-products of other 

 industries renders them in an exceptional degree liable to 

 changes in composition. This feature in their production 

 deserves a most careful consideration, from a financial point 

 of view, on the part of the buyer. 



Commercial feed stuffs are usually bought for their high 

 percentage of cither nitrogen-containing organic matter or 

 fat, or both. They are used to enrich the daily diet of 

 various kinds of farm live stock in both directions. This 

 course is generally adopted on account of a well-known 

 deficiency of most of our home-raised coarse fodder articles 

 in regard to both food constituents, in particular of nitroge- 

 nous matter. Farmers that do not raise a lil)eral proportion 

 of clover-like fodder plants are in a particular degree in need 

 of concentrated commercial feed stuffs rich in nitrogenous 

 food constituents, to turn the excess of the non-nitrogenous 

 food constituents which most of our current home-raised 

 coarse fodder articles contain to the best possible account. 



The liohility of pecuniary losses on the part of the buyer, 

 in consequence of exceptional variations in the percentage of 

 nitrogenous organic matter, crude 2)rotein or fat^ or of both, 

 is quite frequently greatly aggravated by most unexp)ected 

 serious fluctuations in the market cost of leading feed stuffs. 



As we buy in the majority of cases the concentrated. com- 

 mercial feed stuffs on account of their large proportion of 

 nitrogen-containing food constituents, it becomes of special 

 interest to know at what cost a given quantity of nitrogen- 



