COMMERCIAL FEEDING STUFFS. 



BY DR. W. H. JORDAN, DIRECTOR NEW YORK AGRICULTURAL, 

 EXPERIMENT STATION. 



Geneva, N. Y. 



(An address given before the New York State Dairymen's Association.) 



The trade in commercial feeding stuffs is largely of recent development- 

 It is a trade complex in its features, and requires for the proper understand, 

 ing of it a great variety of information. In earlier times, only the cereal 

 grains in their entire condition were found in commerce; now, by-products 

 from a number of manufacturing operations, which consist of parts of various 

 seeds, including oil seeds and farm grains, are found in the markets. For 

 instance, we have refuses from the manufacture of oil, the manufacture of 

 starch and glucose, the manufacture of spirituous liquors, the manufacture 

 of breakfast foods, and so on. Many of these materials have an undoubted 

 value for feeders of all classes of farm animals. Indeed, some of the by-prod- 

 uct commercial feeding stuffs have equal or greater value than the orig- 

 inal seeds from which they were produced. At the same time these by- 

 products have a greatly unequal value, some of them being almost worthless 

 and others possessing the highest quality. Until one of these feeds is in- 

 vestigated as to its composition and utility for various kinds of feeding, 

 it is an uncertain quantity. It requires, therefore, on the part of the con- 

 sumer, a constant watchfulness and search for information concerning 

 the newer products which are offered in the markets. One fact which 

 renders watchfulness and an intelligent understanding of the feeding stuff 

 market so essential, is the numerous mixtures of the various by-product 

 materials which manufacturers are constantly compounding as a means 

 either of disposing of their manufacturing by-products or of making a low 

 cost feed which can be sold at a larger profit than the standard article. 



These numerous feeding stuffs will be found to differ in two ways: (1) in 

 composition and (2) in digestibility. To illustrate, linseed meal contains a 

 large proportion of protein and a minor proportion of the non-nitrogenous 

 compounds, while hominy feed contains practically no more protein than 

 corn meal and a very large percentage of the carbohydrates. Between these 

 extremes there are all gradations in the relative proportions of the several 

 ingredients. It is not difficult to learn what these differences are and how 

 they range when we are dealing with standard articles. When dealing with 

 mixtures which pass under the general name of mixed feeds or under pro- 

 prietary names, we have nothing to guide us other than the assertions of 



