90 Western Live-stock Management 



purpose. In the early days when bran was almost un- 

 salable throughout the western states, it was successfully 

 used for fattening cattle. Because of its bulky nature and 

 high protein content, it is too much like alfalfa and hence 

 not so good for fattening cattle as for dairy stock, and as 

 a result is now used almost entirely for dairy cattle rather 

 than for fattening beef cattle. Middlings are rather too 

 heavy and pasty a feed for fattening cattle, and their 

 value for hogs makes the price prohibitive to the steer- 

 feeder. 



Protein concentrates, such as oil meal, cotton-seed meal, 

 or gluten feed, have little value in the West and are not 

 used at all. The real need in western cattle-feeding is a 

 cheap grain. Any of our common grains would be satis- 

 factory if they were not so high in price. Wet sugar-^beet 

 pulp makes a very satisfactory feed together with good 

 alfalfa hay and when the sugar factory is located in a cattle 

 country, as are most of the factories in the irrigated sec- 

 tions, the pulp is commonly contracted to some large 

 cattle-feeder who will arrange to feed his cattle at the 

 factory so as to avoid hauling the pulp. The pulp carries 

 about 90 per cent of water and it requires very little han- 

 dling to cost more than the pulp is worth. Fifty to one 

 hundred pounds of pulp together with all the alfalfa 

 hay the cattle will eat provides a very satisfactory ration 

 and produces a better steer than alfalfa alone. Beet 

 pulp should feed out about two to three dollars a ton but 

 there is a large amount of expense attached to the handling 

 of it and is generally purchased at not over one dollar a 

 ton. Dried pulp is being put on the market in a few 

 places, notably California, but has so far been largely 

 used by the dairymen, who pay more for it than the beef 

 men think it is worth. The only beef men, therefore, 



