Feeding Dairy Cattle 

 Buckwheat is useful as a grain for dairy cows and young 

 stock when ground but the buckwheat shucks or hulls have 

 no feeding value so that compared with the cereals, oats, 

 barley and corn, ground buckwheat is much less valuable. 

 It i> a case of the valualjle part of the seed being diluted with 

 a worthless part so that the whole is rather low. To reduce 

 the value to comparative terms I would say that ground 

 buckwheat is probably a little more valuable than wheat bran 

 and less valuable than ground oats for feeding cows. The 

 number of pounds of total digestible nutrients in one ton of 

 ground buckwheat is 1268, compared with 1218 pounds in a 

 ton of wheat bran and 1400 pounds in a ton of ground oats. 

 There is more protein in the bran so that possibly the wheat 

 bran i> just as valuable as the ground buckwheat pound for 

 pound when we consider the extra protein in the bran. 

 Ground buckwheat is to.8 per cent, protein, 8.1 per cent, 

 digestible, and wheat bran is about 16 per cent, protein, 12.5 

 per cent, digestible. So we can see that the use of bran in 

 place of ground buckwheat would increase the protein in the 

 grain mixture and add more bulk to the mixture than the 

 ground buckwheat. Therefore, it has been my suggestion 

 to farmers having buckwheat to grind, that they sell the 

 buckwheat and buy wheat bran whenever they can make the 

 exchange at the same price. They have to go to town to 

 get the buckwheat ground at a cost of 15 to 20 cents a 

 hundred so that at the same price per ton the exchange is in 

 favor of the wheat bran. 



BUCKWHEAT HULLS 



Before going into a discussion of the by-products of buck- 

 wheat I think it will be well to get a clear understanding^ of 

 the comparative feeding value of buckwheat hulls. The 

 quickest way to get this is to make a comparison to wheat 

 straw. No dairyman would think of feeding wheat straw. 



Wheat Straw Buckwheat Hulls 



Crude protein 3.1% 



Fiber 37.4 



Nitrogen free extract 44.4 



Fat l-S ^•" 



4.4c 

 43.7 

 38.5 



When we study the digestible analysis we see an even 

 less comparative value for the hulls. „ , . ,xt „ 



'^ "V\n-ieat straw Buckwheat Hulls 



Digestible protein 0.7%, 0.4% 



Digestible carbohydrates ^5-1 '^^-^ 



Digestible fat „ & 0.7 



Total digestible nutrients in one ton 738 lbs. dl» ids. 



Therefore it is seen that ground wheat straw would be 

 twice as good to mix with buckwheat middlings to lighten 

 Page One Hundred Thirty-three 



