146 Feeds and Feeding. 



ses, with pea-vine hay for roughage. He believes that rice is worth 

 $2 per barrel for cattle fattening. 



Kice bran is composed of the outside layer of the kernel proper, 

 together with some of the germs, often adulterated with the hulls. 

 Rice by-products, especially meal and bran, are frequently dis- 

 tasteful to animals, because the oil they contain soon becomes ran- 

 cid. The Louisiana Station^ employed rice bran successfully for 

 one-half the concentrates in a ration for horses and mules. The 

 North Carolina Station- found that, properly balanced with pro- 

 tein feeds, rice bran when not rancid was a valuable feed for cows. 

 (533, 863) 



The hulls of rice grains are tasteless, tough, and woody. They 

 are also heavily charged with silica or sand, and have sharp, 

 roughened flinty edges and needlelike points which do not soften 

 in the digestive tract and so are irritating and dangerous to the 

 walls of the stomach and intestines. The Louisiana Station^ re- 

 ports cases of vomiting and death with cattle fed rice hulls. Rice 

 hulls should never be fed to farm animals, yet they have been ex- 

 tensively employed by unscrupulous dealers for adulterating com- 

 mercial feeding stufl's. Such use should be prohibited by law, since 

 rice hulls in any form are worse than worthless. (863) 



II. Buckwheat and its By-products. 



Tho rarely used for feeding stock, buckwheat has a fair value 

 for such purpose, its nutrients running somewhat lower than those 

 in the leading cereals. (856) 



180. Buckwheat by-products. — The black, woody hulls of the 

 buckwheat grain, Fagopyrum esculentum, have little feeding value 

 and should be used to give bulk or volume to the ration only when 

 it cannot be otherwise secured. On the other hand, that part of 

 the kernel immediately under the hull, which on grinding and bolt- 

 ing forms middlings, is rich in crude protein and fat, with a cor- 

 respondingly high feeding value. The miller, desiring to dispose 

 of as much of the hulls as possible, mixes them with the middlings 

 to form buckwheat bran. The intelligent purchaser will avoid 

 the worthless hulls so far as he can, choosing instead the rich 

 floury middlings. Buckwheat by-products are nearly always used 

 for feedings cows, rightly having the reputation of producing a 

 large flow of milk. The charge that buckwheat by-products make 

 ' Bui. 77. = Bui. 169. ' Bui. 77. 



