Economical Rations in Beef Production. 13 



prairie hay will answer these purposes, but prairie hay ordi- 

 narily costs as much as alfalfa, so there is but little advan- 

 tage in using it. In both the experiments tabulated above, 

 the use of corn-stover at $2.50 per ton as half the roughness 

 reduced the cost of gains in the first 40 cents per hundred, 

 and in the second 48 cents. The stover proved to be actually 

 worth $3.55 per ton with snapped corn and $4.16 per ton with 

 shelled corn, worth 39 cents per bushel, as compared with 

 alfalfa fed alone at $6.00 per ton. Nebraska produced last 

 year, in round numbers, eight million tons of corn-stover. If 

 one-fourth of this amount could have been converted into 

 beef, bringing but $2.50 per ton as fed from the shock instead 

 of 50 cents in the stalk fields, four millions of dollars could 

 have been added to our earnings, and no losses from cornstalk 

 disease would have come from feeding the stalks thus 

 harvested. 



FEEDING CORN FODDEE (ENTIRE PLANT). 



The objection that is usually raised against the practice of 

 cutting and shocking corn for feeding purposes is the labor 

 involved in husking it from the shock. The fact that a great 

 deal of corn may be fed to cattle in the stalk unhusked is en- 

 tirely overlooked. In a 1905-06 experiment one lot of ten 

 two-year-old steers was fed corn fodder for a period of twelve 

 weeks in comparison with the same amount of snapped corn 

 and stover fed another lot. Two-thirds of all the corn given 

 the one lot was attached to the stalk, the remainder consist- 

 ing of shelled corn fed at night. Charging four cents per 

 bushel for husking, the cost of gains was the same in both 

 lots. In 1906-07 this comparison was again made and half 

 of all the corn fed was attached to the stalk. Here again the 

 cost of production was practically the same, being only 10 

 cents per hundred less for snapped corn. The feeding of corn 

 on the stalk in the morning with shelled corn and alfalfa hay 

 at night is proving to be a very economical system of beef 

 production, and it may be continued thruout the entire pe- 



