FEEDING EXPERIMENTS WITH BEEF CATTLE. 



31 



Barn Lots and Water Supply. 



The steers were fed in the barn, shown in Fig. 1. The stalls were 

 located on the south side and were fifteen feet wide by twenty feet long. 

 They were connected with lots twenty feet wide by eighty feet long. 

 The steers were kept in the stalls during the night and a large part of 

 the day. Water was furnished from a supply tank. This system of 

 <jlose housing was followed primarily for the purpose of conserving the 

 manure, otherwise the steers would have been given the free use of the 

 lots. While the barn was closed on all sides, it was well ventilated so 

 that the steers always had comfortable and healthy surroundings. Bed- 

 ding was supplied in the stalls and lots in quantities sufficient to retain 

 the manure and keep the lots in a dry condition, which was sometimes 

 difficult during rainy weather. 



Description of Steers. 



The steers used in the experiments were purchased in western North 

 Carolina, and were taken directly from the pasture and started on fatten- 

 ing feeds at the Station farm. They were fairly uniform in size and 

 type, averaging about nine hundred pounds in weight both years. They 

 were principally Shorthorn grades, although some showed traces of 

 other blood. On the whole, they would class as average feeders in the 

 Southern States. They were quite superior, however, to the general run 

 of steers brought from the mountains by the farmer feeders in this 

 State. The type of the steers used is shown in Figs. 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 9. 



FIG. 2 Steers fed cottonseed meal, corn stover and corn silage in 1909-1910. 



The first year the steers were somewhat heavier and on the whole they 

 were more uniform in size and type, however, the difference was not 

 marked. One lot used the last year, averaged just one-half pound under 

 nine hundred, while the other five lots averaged somewhat more. The 

 size and type was as uniform as could be expected. 



In making the division the steers were separated into three lots of 

 quite uniform size, type and weight. 



