106 AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 



facts force the conclusion that an ill-balanced ration is easily pos- 

 sible, and that there is as good an opportunity to use economy in 

 compounding cattle foods as in buying the materials with which to 

 build a house. It ma}^ occur to some to ask whether a farmer, using 

 the ordinary cattle foods at his command, is likely to feed a waste- 

 ful or inefficient combination. 



For instance, a ration of coarse fodders, roots, corn, meal and 

 bran is not an unusual one, and yet very good evidence can be cited 

 to show that for young animals or milch cows, the same weight of a 

 different mixture would be more economical. 



It is well known to every farmer that nothing excels young 

 pasture grass as a food for all classes of stock, mileh cows young- 

 stock and fattening animals. 



This is explained, in part at least, by the fact that such grass is 

 comparatively rich in digestible protein, much richer than the 

 mature plant. But it is the latter which is stored for winter feed- 

 ing, and this furnishes a much less nitrogenous ration than the 

 grazing animal selects when given the power of choice. 



In subjecting our domestic animals to conditions somewhat arti- 

 ficial, placing them as we do entirely at our mercy in the matter of 

 food, the practice has been, especially when we have depended 

 wholly upon the resources of the farm, to feed much less protein 

 proportionally than is supplied by pasture grass, or an3" other young 

 and succulent material. This is true of even our better class of 

 farmers. 



What shall be said then of those who sell their good hay and feed 

 that which comes from inferior low ground grasses, whose cattle eat 

 straw and corn fodder which have been robbed of their protein to 

 produce the grain that is sold ? 



The writer believes that no mistake in the use of cattle foods has 

 been more general than that of feeding so little digestible protein 

 as to sufficiently meet the requirements for generous growth or milk 

 production. 



This defect can be remedied. It is possible, now that the markets 

 offer so great a variety of foods, for those who depend largely upon 

 purchased grain to make good the deficit of home raised materials, 

 to buy that which will balance the ration. 



