Ill. A COMPARISON OF SOME COMMON FARM-GROWN 
ROUGHAGES FOR FATTENING STEERS (EXPERIMENT 
OF 1915-16.) 
INTRODUCTION. 
This experiment was conducted on the Canton Stock Farm, located 
in the “Brown loam” section of Mississippi, near the town of 
Canton, in Madison County. The work was conducted during the 
winter of 1915-16 under the same general plan under which the other 
cooperative work was conducted and does not need explaining here. 
Mr. 8.S. Jerdan, who had been employed for three years previously 
in conducting such experiments, was located on the farm and closely 
supervised the weighing of all feeds and the feeding. His entire 
time was devoted to this and some other experimental work being 
done on the farm. 
OBJECT AND PLAN OF THE WORK. 
Many feeders have claimed that when silage is fed to steers 
they should have a small amount of dry roughage in addition, and 
that it would be more economical and satisfactory to feed a small 
amount of roughage with the silage than to feed silage alone. It has 
been claimed also that this is especially desirable when no other 
concentrate than cottonseed meal is fed. 
This experiment was planned and conducted to determine whether 
these statements were true. Three lots of steers were used for this 
comparison, and a fourth lot was fed to see what such common south- 
ern feeds as cowpea hay, oat straw, and corn stover would give satis- 
factory returns if they were fed in equal parts to fattening steers. 
CATTLE USED. 
The 80 steers used in this experiment were grades ranging from 
one-half to seven-eighths pure-bred of the various beef breeds— 
Shorthorn, Hereford, Aberdeen-Angus, Red Poll, and Devon. In hge 
they ranged from 2 to 4 years. 
All the steers were bought in Madison County, Miss., and were 
better than the average steers found in that section. They averaged 
787 pounds in weight when placed in the experiment. 
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