66 SHEEP FEEDING 



Value of concentrates. Bran, oil meal, and cottonseed 

 products are thought by many good feeders to be necessary 

 supplements when feeding corn, and are, without doubt, 

 excellent feeds, especially the first two, but it is ques- 

 tionable if they can be fed with corn at a profit when good 

 clover or alfalfa hay forms the roughness. With the non- 

 leguminous hays they become much more necessary. The 

 feeder who has to use timothy, prairie hay, or stover for a 

 roughness can profitably feed oil meal or cottonseed meal 

 if he lives in the South and does not make too long a feed. 

 If corn and a concentrate are fed together, the corn should 

 be in such a form that the two can be mixed, for other- 

 wise the sheep seem to prefer to eat up the concentrate 

 first and then run around and look for more before they 

 begin on the corn. This may appear as a minor point, but 

 its value is shown by a large feeder who split a bunch of 

 sheep, half getting corn straight and the other half receiving 

 corn and a supplement ; otherwise they were treated alike. 

 At the end of a seventy-one day feed the corn-straight group 

 had gained seven pounds more than the corn-and-supplement 

 lot. The feeder's explanation for the poorer gains made 

 by those receiving the supplement was similar to the one 

 mentioned. He fed the concentrate with ear corn. 



Screenings. A few years ago one could have said with 

 safety that, in regard to quantity fed, screenings stood 

 close to corn as a sheep feed. There were large feeding 

 stations near the milling centers in Minnesota and Wis- 

 consin, and some near Chicago, where thousands of sheep 

 were fed annually the screenings that the big flour mills 

 sold for three to four dollars a ton. Now most of these 

 feeding plants are out of the business, and will probably 

 never take it up again. 



