60 



COMMERCIAL FEEDING STUFFS. 



COMPARISON OF COMMERCIAL AND HOME-GROWN FEEDS. 



A study of commercial feeding stuffs would not be complete with- 

 out some mention of the relative feeding value and economy of such 

 feeds as compared with those that can be grown on the farm. It is 

 of course at times desirable or even necessary to use some of the 

 more concentrated commercial feeds in the case of growing animals, 

 in milk production, etc., but in the great majority of cases the cost of 

 mixing such standard concentrated feeds as dried blood, cotton-seed 

 ^ineal, linseed meal, and brewery and distillery wastes with the 

 products from the farm is much less when this work is performed 

 by the farmer himself, rather than when it is performed by the 

 manufacturer. 



In the bulletin of Jenkins and Winton, previously quoted, it is 

 shown that some of the more common farm crops used for feeding 

 purposes have the average composition given in Table 27. 



TABLE 27. Average percentage composition of home-grown feeds. 



These home-grown feeds could be better compared with the com- 

 mercial feeds if the digestible nutrients in all of the latter were known, 

 but since this is not the case, only a comparison of feeding values, 

 based on the total nutrients present, can be made. It is not neces- 

 sary to make this comparison in each individual case, but the general 

 conclusion resulting from such a study would be that in a large num- 

 ber of cases the home-grown feeds are superior to the commercial 

 feeds, especially in the case of those commercial feeding stuffs bearing 

 a fancy name, which entirely masks the ingredients used. Further- 

 more, in many cases the commercial mixtures that do really have a 

 higher nutritive value than the ordinary home-grown feeds could be 

 much more economically prepared on the farm by buying the stand- 

 ard concentrated feeds, such as blood meal, cotton-seed and linseed 

 meal, etc., and mixing them with home-grown crops. 



