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hay. In order, therefore, to make sure that the cattle will dis- 

 criminate against the grass to a sufficient degree, or that they 

 will eat a sufficiently quantity of grain to make rapid gains and 

 become fat in a reasonable time, it is necessary to offer them 

 grain in a palatable form. In winter, when the roughage is not 

 particularly palatable, sound corn in practically any form will 

 be preferred to hay, so there is little difficulty in maintaining the 

 proper proportion between the grain and roughage con- 

 sumed. In other words, the grass in summer is much more 

 likely to interfere with the animal's appetite for grain than 

 is the hay in winter. 



It is furthermore true that the grain in summer is dryer 

 and harder and therefore more difficult to masticate than in 

 winter. The ears of corn that have been husked and stored in 

 a crib are by midsummer so dry and the cob is so hard that 

 it is practically out of the question for the steer to handle it in 

 this form profitably, especially is this true if it be one of the 

 improved and high shelling varieties of corn like Reid's Yellow 

 Dent, Learning, Boone County White, etc. Some of the old 

 and unimproved cattle corns have so soft a cob as to not require 

 this treatment even in summer. The yield of such a corn how- 

 ever is so low as to more than offset the advantage of the soft 

 cob in cattle feeding. Moreover, the corn by this time is quite 

 likely to have been soiled more or less by mice and rats, unless 

 stored with the husk on. It is a very common and well ap- 

 proved practice to snap the corn and store it with the husk on if 

 it is to be fed to cattle the following summer. It is usually 

 husked just before being offered, comes out fresh, clean, is not 

 unduly dried out, and is exceedingly palatable. 



Another point undoubtedly influencing the practice is that 

 the corn may be soaked in summer much more conveniently 

 than in winter, as all difficulty from freezing is avoided. The 

 only point to be guarded against is souring. If the corn is not 

 soaked more than twelve hours and the box is cleaned out each 

 time, the water changed frequently and the feed troughs are 

 carefully cleaned each day, no difficulty of this nature will be 

 experienced. For details of the practice in these regards, the 

 reader is referred to the remarks of the different feeders in 

 the main tables under the head of Methods of Feeding. 



