50 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



is mainly what makes the best upland hay better than the 

 best salt hay. Medium quality of upland has 5.4 pounds of 

 albuminoids, 41.1 of carbo-hydrates, ratio about one to eight, 

 — the proportion that is right to keep dry stock in fair condi- 

 tion. Practice for years has proved that dry stock will do 

 very well on plenty of medium quality upland hay. As salt 

 and meadow hay need but two pounds additional albuminoids 

 per one hundred pounds to make the ratio right for dry stock, 

 and as cotton-seed meal has twenty-six pounds in one hun- 

 dred to spare, if fed to dry stock, it follows that thirteen 

 hundred pounds of salt hay, or good river meadow hay, 

 mixed with one hundred pounds of cotton-seed meal, is 

 equal to fourteen hundred pounds of medium quality upland 

 hay. If this is so, — and I ask the farmers of Essex County 

 to prove that it is or is not, — then it must be economy 

 for those farmers who have been in the habit of wintering 

 their stock on salt and meadow hay, and have them very poor 

 in the spring, to sell part of their hay, buy cotton-seed, 

 utilize the carbo-hydrates of what they do feed, and have 

 their stock fat, sleek, healthy and happy, profitable to their 

 owners, and a credit to the county. If this essay shall be 

 the means of leading one farmer to feed his stock so as to 

 better supply their wants and make them more comfortable, 

 the writer will be well paid. It is well to know the con- 

 ditions under which wheat-bran is more economical than 

 corn-meal. 



When they are fed so as to utilize all their nutritious ele- 

 ments, their value is as five to seven ; thus, if wheat-bran is 

 worth $20 per ton, corn-meal is worth $28 per ton ; but as the 

 bran has a surplus of albuminoids, there may be conditions 

 in which a ton of wheat-bran will make more milk than a ton 

 of meal ; thus the farmer needs to know the composition of 

 the material he is to feed with his grain, before he can tell 

 which it is best for him to buy, at the market price. 



Knowledge of how and when to use roots for stock, is 

 important. To feed any of the beet family with average quality 

 English hay and corn-meal, is very unprofitable, because beets 

 are deficient in albuminoids, much more so than turnips, but 

 all roots can be used to the best advantage with poor hay and 



