CUTTING AND HANDLING CORN. 309 



should be a pipe, from which water may be drawn upon a 

 sieve and sprinkled over the chaff, to moisten it. This 

 sprinkling is done as fast as the cut corn is delivered in the 

 car. The water is regulated by the quantity of corn deliv* 

 ered. Then, by allowing it to remain in mass for 12 to 18 

 hours, it will become warmed up by incipient fermentation, 

 somewhat softened and rendered more easy of digestion. 

 This is the best way to handle it when not steamed. The 

 author has used it with this slight fermentation, as well as 

 with steaming.; and, although the latter is preferable 

 where every convenience is had for it, yet moistening and 

 fermenting is a skillful way of handling it, a-nd will give 

 good returns. An acre of corn will produce about 50 per 

 cent, more beef in this way than by allowing the cattle to 

 harvest it for themselves, even when the weather is com- 

 fortable, and 100 per cent, more in the coldest weather. 



It will be seen that the labor of harvesting and feeding 

 is no more, on this plan, than of harvesting and feeding a 

 crop of fodder corn. The fact that it is a large crop of 

 grain does not add at all to the labor. Most good feeders 

 in the Eastern States, as a matter of economy, run the 

 fodder corn through a straw-cutter, except when fed green. 

 There can be no doubt that the corn crop is much better 

 utilized on this plan than when husked and shelled and 

 the corn fed whole, for it will not then be remasticated, 

 and much of it will pass the cattle without digestion. 



This mode of feeding the corn crop can be carried on 

 upon a large or small scale the larger the scale, the less 

 labor proportionally. Where one hundred head of cattle 

 are fed, it will cost less in proportion than for twenty head, 

 because the power and the cutter will be larger, and the 

 work done more rapidly. With an engine and a large cut- 

 ter, with a proper carrier and sprinkler for moistening it, 

 one man can prepare the ration, feed and care for one hun- 

 dred head of cattle. In this case the manual labor of cut- 



