188 FEEDING OF FARM STOCK. 



full, but she does not know what her different feeds cost 

 or how conducive an excess of them is to 1 a bad case of 

 indigestion. The selection of feeds by the cow is not 

 unlike that of the small boy with a lot of green apples and 

 a box of sugar plums. It is just as necessary to control 

 the feeding, of the dairy cow as it is to guard the diet of 

 the small boy. Besides regulating the animal's feed, the 

 farmer should be able to mix the different feeds in the 

 right proportions for securing, first a balanced ration, and 

 second the most economical ration. To aid him in doing 

 this the chemist, the physiologist and the feeder have by 

 careful work and experiments compiled various tables 

 showing the composition of feeds, the proportions of them 

 digestible, their relative value and the amounts of them 

 that stock should have every day. The farmer will doubt- 

 less ask, ' ' But how am I to use these tables ? ' ' The answer 

 is, "Use them just as the good housewife uses her cook 

 book. ' ' The cook book is the woman 's guide for preparing 

 the rations to be placed on the dinner table and in just the 

 same way the farmer should study and use the feeding 

 tables for preparing the rations to be given to his stock. 

 It is with the purpose in view of giving to the farmer some 

 plain definitions of feeding terms and some practical illus- 

 trations of feeding tables and how to use them that this 

 bulletin has been prepared. 



SUBSTANCES OF FEEDING STUFFS. 



Let us look first at the classes of substances into which 

 the chemist divides feeding stuffs. He tells us that a given 

 feed contains so much water, so much ash, so much protein, 

 so much carbohydrates and so much ether extract or fat. 

 By water he means the amount of moisture which would 

 be driven off from a sample of a given feed when kept for 

 several hours in an oven at the temperature of boiling 

 water. By ash he means the amount of material which is 

 left behind when the feed is burned. This material con- 

 sists of the mineral elements which have been taken from 



