56 MAINE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. I902. 



The offals (wheat bran, middlings and mixed feeds) from the 

 milling of wheat are not quite so rich in protein, but they carry 

 larger amounts of digestible mineral matters. For these reasons 

 and because they are usually enough lower in price to warrant 

 their purchase, the feeder of the more concentrated foods gen- 

 erally uses these offals. 



FEEDS LOW IN PROTEIN. 



Very few farmers can afford to buy feeds low in protein and 

 high in carbohydrates at any price at which they have been or 

 are likely to be offered. The farmer should grow all the coarse 

 feeds that he needs. Oat and similar feeds are very much like 

 corn stalks or oat straw in composition. Some of these feeds 

 have cottonseed or other nitrogenous feeding stuffs added to 

 them so that they carry more protein than straight oat feeds, but 

 these mixtures are always more expensive sources of protein 

 than are the glutens, cottonseed and linseed meals. One hun- 

 dred pounds of an ordinary oat feed has from eight to eleven 

 pounds of protein. At seventy-five cents per hundred the pro- 

 tein costs from seven to nine cents a pound. One hundred 

 pounds of a good gluten meal has from thirty-four to forty per 

 cent of protein. At Si. 50 per hundred the protein costs about 

 four cents a pound and it not only costs but half as much per 

 pound as the protein in an oat feed but it is much more digestible. 

 As a source of protein, it would be as good economy to pay $60 

 a ton for high grade cottonseed meal as to pay $15 a ton for the 

 ordinary oat feed. 



COTTONSEED MEAL. 



Cottonseed meal is a by-product from the manufacture of cot- 

 tonseed oil. After the cotton has been taken from the seed in the 

 cotton gin, the remaining down or "linters" and the hard black 

 seed coats or hulls are removed by machinery. The remnants of 

 the seed are cooked, and the oil expressed by high pressure. The 

 resulting cottonseed cake is ground into the bright yellow cotton- 

 seed meal of commerce. Such a meal carries from 40 to 50 pei 

 cent or even more protein. 



Sometimes the black hulls are ground with the cake and a dark 

 colored meal of very inferior feeding value is the result. Not all 

 dark colored meal is necessarily adulterated with hulls, but 

 strictly first-class fresh cottonseed meal is always bright and 

 yellow. 



