94 MAINE STATE COLLEGE 



The Nutritive Ratio. — The Profitable Mixture of Foods. 



These feeding experiments with swine offer some very direct 

 and emphatic testimony bearing on that much discussed problem in 

 the feeding of farm animals, viz. the nutritive ratio. This is the 

 problem : Should a farmer take into consideration the composition 

 as well as the price of cattle foods? Can he by purchasing an oil 

 meal instead of corn meal, get a combination of foods with suffi- 

 ciently greater food value, pound for pound, to warrant paying 

 more for the oil meal than the corn meal would cost ? In short, of 

 the foods available to the farmer, is one combination better than 

 another ? 



These questions relate to an important matter, and one con- 

 cerning which farmers get great variety of advice. They are told 

 on the one hand to adhere to the formulas known as the German 

 rations, and on the other hand to buy what costs least per pound. 



The following figures, the result of a close analysis of the data 

 I of these swine-feeding experiments, furnish the inquirer with facts 

 relating to this matter that may need some explanation, but no 

 emphasizing. They are the outcome of a careful test of a theory, 

 and being the answer which several animals have given to a 

 definite question, they deserve unprejudiced consideration. 



