472 DISEASES OF CATTLE. 



THE FEED-CUTTER. 



There should be a good feed-cutter on every dairy farm, useful for 

 silo filling in the fall and for chaffing feed in the winter. All cornstalks 

 should be put through this machine, for then they are in better condi- 

 tion for feeding, and the coarser portions left uneaten are in good form 

 for bedding and the manure heap. Long cornstalks are a nuisance in 

 a feeding manger, worthless for bedding, and troublesome in the manure 

 pile. Many farmers find difficulty in feeding cut cornstalks, since some- 

 times the cows refuse to eat them. In a few cases we have found that 

 the sharp ends of the cornstalks, when cut certain lengths, injure the 

 mouths of the cows. This difficulty can usually be avoided by chang- 

 ing the length of cut. Judging from experiments at the Kansas sta- 

 tion, it is possible that in the lower portions of the corn belt cornstalks 

 are so coarse and poor that they are not useful for feeding dairy cows, 

 but farther north I am sure they will pay for the cutting. Where they 

 are not well eaten the cause is often due to overfeeding, or endeavoring 

 to have the cows live on too limited a variety of foods. Keep the 

 mangers clean and feed the cut fodder with care, and usually very little 

 will be left over, and that only the coarsest portion. Experiments at 

 the Wisconsin station show that with the varieties of corn raised there 

 much more of the cut stalks will be eaten than if fed uncut under the 

 same conditions. 



Where corn is cheap and labor high, uncut shock corn of small varie- 

 ties can be very successfully fed to dairy cows. It is surprising to see 

 how they thrive on it, and the undigested grain can be gathered from 

 the droppings by lively shotes. This system is somewhat crude, but 

 not without advantages in the pioneer stage of dairying in the corn 

 belt, where it helps to educate the farmers to a proper appreciation of 

 the value of corn and corn stover for dairy cows. After a time this 

 practice should give way to more improved methods commonly followed 

 in the older dairy sections. 



Much has been written in regard to wetting hay, straw, and stalks, 

 putting meal thereon and mixing up before feeding. The English are 

 accustomed to pulp or slice roots, mix these with cut hay or "chaff," 

 as they call it, and then sprinkle the meal over the mass, shoveling it 

 over. Such mixtures must be very palatable to the cow, and give ex- 

 cellent results. In most dairy sections we have not yet progressed so 

 far in our feeding methods, and the simpler practice of giving hay and 

 grain separately will probably be continued by many, as it gives very 

 fair results. 



The best general rule to follow is to put the food of a cow into just 

 that form which seems most palatable to her. Many labor under the 

 mistaken idea that food will not be properly mixed in the rumen unless 

 it is mixed before being swallowed. Examinations of the rumens of 

 cows fed experimentally show that different kinds of feed are all inti- 



