Feeding Dairy Cattle 



OATS 



When we come to this feed we come to a feed which is 

 used possibly as widely as any feed with which farmers have 

 to do. Oats are grown the whole country over by large and 

 small, and rich and poor farmers. It comes pretty nearly 

 being the universal feed for horses in the United States. 



As a roughage oats are utilized both as green feed, as 

 hay and the straw is probably the most useful straw for 

 feeding of any of the straws from the cereal grains. Oats 

 grown with Canadian field peas make one of the very best 

 of our soiling crops and a useful crop in that the seeding 

 time and harvesting time may be spread over a consider- 

 able number of days by making successive plantings and 

 in this way securing a succession of green crops through the 

 early summer. Oats and peas both have the advantage of 

 getting started early in the cool spring months and thus 

 making it possible to get a green crop rather early in the 

 year from a spring seeding of the same year. 



Oats cut in the milk stage make a satisfactory hay. 



Oat straw according to its analysis has nearly as high a 

 value for feeding as straight timothy hay. I very much 

 doubt if horses could utilize oat straw to anywhere near as 

 good advantage and get as much out of it as they could from 

 timothy hay, biat if one is forced to the feeding of timothy 

 hay to dairy cattle, particularly if the timothy hay is late cut, 

 I am of the opinion that he would make more money if he 

 would utilize oat straw to considerable extent, to supply the 

 necessary roughage and sell the timothy hay, because timo- 

 thy is not utilized to good advantage by dairy cattle and 

 straight timothy is not much more palatable than oat straw. 



However, I do not think that we need to use up any 

 valuable space discussing the feeding value of any kind of 

 straw before an intelligent audience of dairy farmers, because 

 no farmer who is on to his jolj is going to force his 

 cows to eat either timothy hay or straw of any kind for rough- 

 age. The only decent roughage for a dairy cow and the 

 only kind that her owner should ever put before her is a 

 good variety of legume hay. The place for straw in a real 

 dairy barn is not before the cows but under them. 



OATS AS A GRAIN FEED 



Oats used as a grain makes up one of the most useful 

 feeds that we have on the dairy farm. We do not need to 

 discuss the value of oats for horses. Almost all people. 



Page One Hundred Twenty-four 



