FEEDING STUFE INSPECTION. 199 



seed which occurs in this class of feeds is the corn cockle, which 

 is quite poisonous. In bulletin No. 20 of the United States 

 Department of Agriculture, Division of Botany, and also in 

 Farmers' Bulletin No. 86, Chesnut calls attention to the corn 

 cockle in part as follows : — "The poison is found in nearly 

 all parts of the plant, but mainly in the kernel of the seed. 

 Cases of poisoning have been noted among all sorts of poultry 

 and household animals, but are rarely due to any portion of the 

 plant as growing in the field. The poisoning is generally pro- 

 duced by a poor grade of flour made from wheat containing 

 cockle seeds. Machinery is used to remove these seeds from 

 the wheat but the difficulty of separating them is so great 

 that the result is not entirely accomplished." According to 

 Chesnut, flour containing corn cockle has often been used for 

 bread and eaten sometimes with fatal results. 



In Bulletin No. 36 of the Maryland Agricultural College 

 attention is called to "8 or 10 cases of poisoning of poultry by 

 feeding stuff sold as middlings." These cases were all traced 

 to one lot of the feed which, upon examination, was found to 

 contain considerable corn cockle. A feed which contains as 

 much of this seed as does No. 2927 is objectionable not only 

 on account of the crop of plants which might be grown but 

 because of its possible injury to stock. 



WEED SEEDS IN MADE UP FEEDS. 



The most flagrant offenders carrying live weed seeds are the 

 molasses or sugar feeds, which include the molac feeds, sucrene 

 dairy feed, Hammond dairy feed, etc., the Merritt's Jersey Cow 

 feed, some of the scratch feeds and the H. J. Flax feed. 



In the case of the molac feeds, it will be noted that in the first 

 germination test, recorded in the table on page 196, one sam- 

 ple did not sprout at all and a second sprouted a comparatively 

 small number ; but on referring to the table on page 198 it will 

 be seen that under more favorable conditions both these samples 

 sprouted quite large numbers of seeds. The same is partially 

 true of Merritt's cow feed. In the first trial two samples did 

 sprout and one did not. The sucrene dairy feed, which did not 

 germinate in the first test, showed good germination in the 

 second test both by separating the weed seeds and by treating 



