332 The Feeding of Animals 



of one or more of the highly nitrogenous feeding stuffs. 

 It is also desirable to feed a small proportion of some 

 succulent food. What is needed is a milk -producing 

 ration, and the discussion of feeding cows for milk 

 production in a preceding chapter is in part pertinent 

 to ewes. Corn, oats, wheat bran or middlings, beans, 

 peas, gluten and oil meals are all useful in making up 

 such a ration. With safe feeding one pound daily of 

 a mixture of oil or gluten meal, one part, wheat bran, 

 two parts, and corn meal, two parts, combined with 

 two or three pounds of roots or silage and what coarse 

 feed the appetite will bear, is a good milk ration, and 

 will bring the ewes through the strain of suckling 

 lambs in good condition. If it is desired to produce 

 the most rapid growth of the lambs, they should also 

 have access from nearly the first to a grain mixture. 

 Experiments indicate that this mixture is most eco- 

 nomical, especially if the lambs are to be fed later for 

 the market, when containing a generous proportion of 

 corn meal, to which may be added, among other mate- 

 rials, ground oats, wheat bran, gluten feed or meal, or 

 oil meal, reference being had to the ruling market prices. 

 In an experiment at the Maine Experiment Station 

 lambs suckled by grain -fed mothers and with access 

 to grain themselves made 75 per cent or more gain 

 in live weight than those did that received no grain 

 and which were suckled by mothers that ate a limited 

 grain ration. Five and three -fourths pounds of grain 

 produced one pound of growth. At the Wisconsin 

 Experiment Station, as an average of three trials, lambs 

 fed grain before weaning gained in ten to twelve weeks 



