474 DISEASES OF CATTLE. 



other food like bran and mixed with roughage. Cotton seed and cotton- 

 seed ineal have a deleterious effect on butter, if fed in large quantities, 

 but with care they can be fed at any season of the year with profit. 

 Cotton-seed nieal should be used more generally at the Korth, its high 

 fertilizing value after passing through the animal often being worth the 

 first cost.. 



Oil meal or oil cake. This by-product of the linseed-oil factories is a 

 a most valuable food in the dairy barn, though it should be used inlim 

 jted quantities. It is especially useful for calves, and a couple of pounds 

 a day may be fed to dairy cows with profit. It is very rich in fertiliz- 

 ing elements. Oil meal to the value of $8,000,000 is annually shipped 

 to the Old World. For the fertility it contains, if for no other reason 

 it should all be fed in this country and dairy products instead shipped 

 abroad. 



Bran is one of the most valuable feeds in the dairy. From its loose, 

 husky nature and cooling effect on the system, it can be given in almost 

 any quantity, with little danger of overfeeding. It is the safest food in 

 the dairy barn, and should always be in store to mix with corn meal or 

 the ground grains, cotton-seed meal, or oil meal. We know that wheat 

 rapidly depletes the soil of its fertility, and the chemist has found that 

 the larger part of the fertility that goes into the wheat grain is stored 

 near the outside of the grain in what becomes the bran on grinding. A 

 few farmers still hold that bran is little better than sawdust. Such 

 notions belong to the past generation. Exporters are studying how to 

 compress bran in order to ship it abroad. This movement should be 

 stopped by a lively home demand. 



Shorts and middlings are now but a finer form of bran. Sometimes 

 they contain much starch and form a first-class food, but, again, they 

 carry the dirt and dust of the mill, and are not so palatable as bran. 



Malt sprouts and brewers' grains, either wet or dried, are valuable 

 foods, rich in protein, and often sell at such low prices as to admit of 

 very profitable use in the dairy barn. Wet brewers' grains, because of 

 their cheapness and abundance, are often misused. The sloppy drain- 

 ings saturate the feed boxes and mangers and become putrid, endanger- 

 ing the lives of the cows and those who use the milk. If fed when fresh, 

 and, in reasonable quantity, and the surroundings kept perfectly clean 

 and wholesome, brewers' grains are an excellent food for dairy cows. 



Gluten meal, a by-product in the manufacture of starch or glucose, is 

 very rich in protein. The heavy forms of this meal should be fed cau- 

 tiously and extended with some light substance like bran. 



Corn stover or corn fodder is an excellent and healthful cattle food, 

 being quite free from dust, and very palatable to the cow. The amount 

 of nutriment which can be gathered from a cornfield, and the portion 

 which remains in the stalks has already been discussed under steer 

 feeding, and the reader is referred to that portion of this chapter for 

 information on this important point. 



