ages. The daily diet of one aud two year old steers was compounded 

 with a due consideration of the wants at the particular age of each 

 lot. Their respective daily diet consequently differed essentially only 

 in regard to quantity and proportion of the same fodder articles. 



The local market price of the various fodder articles used at the 

 time of the obseivation has been adopted as the basis of determining 

 the cost of the daily fodder rations. A loss of eight per cent, of the 

 essential fertilizing constituents contained in the feed consumed has 

 been assumed a fair compensation for the amount of nitrogen, phos- 

 phoric acid and potassium oxide retained in the growing animal, and 

 thereby lost to the manurial resources of the farm. Accepting E. 

 Wolff's statement of the chemical composition of a live steer as the 

 basis in our calculation of the loss of the above stated manurial sub- 

 stances, one hundred pounds of increase in the live weight of the 

 steers, at the present market value of phosphoric acid, potassium 

 oxide and nitrogen, represents a loss of from 52 to 55 cents to the 

 manurial resources of the farm. From the previous statement, it 

 will be noticed that ninety-two per cent, of the essential fertilizing 

 constituents contained in the feed consumed are considered available 

 in the manure produced in connection with raising steers for the meat 

 market. The net cost of the feed stated in the subsequent report of 

 our financial results represents therefore the cost of the feed con- 

 sumed, after deducting from its original market price ninety-two per 

 cent, of the money value of the essential fertilizing constituents, i. e., 

 nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potassium oxide, it contains. 



The statements of the relative proportion of the digestible nitro- 

 genous and non-nitrogenous food constituents of the daily diet, (its 

 nutritive ratio), are based on the mean of moi* recent .observations 

 in connection with actual feeding experiments elsewhere (Wolff). 



The different daily fodder rations recorded below were compounded 

 with a view to compare different combinations of well known feed 

 stuffs with reference to feeding effect and to influence on cost of feed. 

 Those daily fodder rations which have given us the most satisfactory 

 results in this connection are printed in italics. 



The general history of the management of the experiment and the 

 financial results of the whole operation are published upon a few 

 subsequent pages. It is for obvious reasons not advisable to enter, 

 at this early stage of our experiments upon a detailed critical discus- 

 sion of the lessons which may be learned from the results obtained. 

 Some facts, however, brought out in the course of the experiment 

 are apparently so well supported under existing circumstances that 

 a brief statement concerning them may claim some special attention. 



