146 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



and those which he can profitably use as supplements, with 

 their combinations. This involves familiarity with the cur- 

 rent market prices for feeding stuffs. It often happens that 

 a farmer, whose first thought is to use the crops produced at 

 home, can sell hay and grain, and buy certain forms of con- 

 centrated cattle food which happen to be available at advan- 

 tageous rates, — gaining material profit by the exchange. 

 It was lately well demonstrated to dairymen in the north- 

 west that they could not only aftbrd to sell corn at sixteen 

 cents per bushel and oats at fourteen cents and buy wheat 

 bran to feed instead (at |4.50 per ton), but that a handsome 

 margin of profit attended such transactions, besides provid- 

 ino- a better-balanced ration for their cows. The selection of 

 cows and the feeding problem have been well managed at the 

 Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station. I lately ex- 

 amined there the animals, the feed and the daily records for 

 two years, which show several cows producing butter month 

 after month at a cost for food of only four cents per pound, 

 and sometimes less. Other cows, which would generally 

 pass for good dairy stock, fed on the same materials, made 

 the food cost of the butter produced two or three times as 

 much. At the low prices of feed which prevail this winter, 

 the station mentioned is able to carry good dairy cows of 

 one thousand pounds' weight on a daily ration costing from 

 four to five cents. This same station finds " a cow will do 

 her best on a balanced ration composed of any of the ordi- 

 nary feed stuffs, provided they are palatable and digestible." 

 This being the case, the judicious feeder will select the 

 cheapest available food that will make a ration meeting the 

 conditions named. 



The figures given as the cost of producing butter from a 

 good cow in the State of Minnesota show the competition 

 which ])utter-makers farther east must meet from that sec- 

 tion. It is stoutly maintained that, proper allowance being 

 made for all expenses, Minnesota can place good butter in 

 our eastern markets at a total cost of ten cents a pound, or 

 twelve at the most. As contrasted with this, the dairy de- 

 partment of Cornell University (New York) reports sixteen 

 cents as its lowest figures for food cost of producing a pound 

 of butter fat. This means a cost of over twenty cents for 



