12 



14- What has been your experience in feeding cottonseed 

 meal, linseed meal, or bran in connection with corn? 



15. What roughness do you prefer during the fattening 

 period, and do you allow steers to have all of, it they will eat ? 



16. Have you used silage, and with what results? 



1 7. Do you crush, shell, grind or soak your corn, or feed 

 it in the ear whole? 



18. How many hogs do you estimate per steer? 



Returns were received from 726 feeders in Missouri, 

 representing 55 counties; 39 from Illinois, representing 16 coun- 

 ties; 91 from Iowa, representing 23 counties; one from Ne- 

 braska. These 857 individuals represent an average experience 

 of 18.3 years each, with a total of practically two million head of 

 cattle fed and marketed. 



It is fair to presume that we secured returns from the most 

 intelligent, the most successful, and the most experienced cattle- 

 men in Missouri, and presumably likewise in. Illinois and Iowa. 

 It is obivous, therefore, that their experience in the matter of 

 feeding cattle and their conclusions, based upon this experience, 

 are entitled to the greatest respect and to have great weight 

 with the teacher or investigator in shaping his theories, and with 

 the practical feeder in determining his practice. This is par- 

 ticularly true in the case of those questions where the 'answers 

 agree to any very large extent. 



THE PRACTICAL FEEDERS' CONCLUSIONS USUALLY RIGHT. 



As a rule, the practical man arrives in the long run at cor- 

 rect conclusions on the main points involved in his practice. 

 This is perhaps more true of the cattle feeder than of any other 

 class of farmers, for several reasons : 



First, he is among the most intelligent and progressive of 

 the farming class. 



Second, giving most of his attention to the buying, feeding 

 and marketing of cattle, makes him in a large sense a specialist 

 in this particular branch of agriculture. 



Third, he has opportunities for checking up his observa- 

 tions and judgment with accurate data that men in other lines 

 of farming do not have. This comes about because, as a rule, 



