22 Ctttie feeding Experiment. 



ration by furnishing greater variety and by its tendency to 

 check scours sometimes caused by alfalfa. The stover fed 

 with alfalfa returned a value of $4.57 per ton in comparison 

 with alfalfa at $6 per ton as the sole roughness. 



4. Sorghum hay returned a value of |4.63 per ton in com- 

 parison with prairie hay at $6, each being fed with corn 90 

 per cent and oil-meal 10 per cent. 



5. The ration given Lot 1, corn and prairie hay, with a nu- 

 tritive ratio of 1 :10.2, was too low in protein for large gains. 

 However, the fact that corn, alfalfa, and stover, with a nutri- 

 tive ratio of 1 :8.4, gave a little larger gain for food consumed 

 than corn and alfalfa (1:7.4), is additional proof of the cor- 

 rectness of the "American idea" that the old and accepted 

 German standards call for more protein than is needed for 

 the best gains, and that a nutritive ratio of 1 :8 may be just 

 as satisfactory for fairly mature cattle as one more narrow. 

 For Western conditions it is certainly more profitable. 



6. The margin between cost and average selling price 

 (net) for all steers in this experiment was a little less than 

 fl per hundred. While the profit was small, the steers re- 

 turned a good price for the rough feeds at the market values 

 quoted high enough to make them profitable crops to grow 

 on the farm. Had the feeds been sold, these values for rough- 

 age would not have been secured on the average Nebraska 

 farm, nor would the manure have been left to make the next 

 crop larger. The results furnish a strong argument in favor 

 of judicious feeding. 



Note. The writer's experience in fattening cattle on corn 

 in the stalk prompts the conjecture that if a part of the 

 corn in Lot 4 had been fed as shock corn (bundle corn), 

 still more economical gains would have been secured, as with 

 that system there is no expense for husking and shelling the 

 corn, the cob is kept fresh and soft within the husk, thus 

 easily masticated, and the mixture is more readily pene- 

 trated by digestive juices in the stomach than is shelled corn. 



