108 DESCRIPTION OF FEEDING STUFFS 
corn belt and outside of it. These would furnish good feed for farm 
animals, especially young stock, cattle, and horses doing light work, 
and would produce considerable revenue to the farmer by proper 
handling and feeding with other materials. 
Method of Harvesting.—The method of handling the corn 
crop generally practised in the main corn-growing sections is to 
_harvest the grain in-the field without cutting the stalks, and to 
turn cattle into the field during late fall and early winter to eat off 
the leaves and tender parts of the stalks, the rest being wasted. On 
the better-managed stock farms, especially in dairy regions, corn 
is cut by machinery and placed in shocks in the field, and the ear 
corn is harvested late in the fall, the shocks of stalks remaining 
in the field until needed for feeding to stock. Owing to the bulky 
nature of the stalks and the slowness with which they are cured, 
they cannot be stored under roof in large quantities. The corn is, 
however, now often husked and run through a shredder in the. 
same Operation in the late fall, and the shredded corn fodder is 
stacked for feeding during the winter. This makes a valuable feed 
for farm animals and forms a good partial substitute for more or 
less expensive hay. 
Field-curing of Indian Corn.—Considerable losses of nutrients 
oceur in the corn fodder when this is left in shocks in the field 
exposed to the severe weather of late fall and winter. These losses 
have been studied at a number of experiment stations, among others 
at the Wisconsin station by Professor Henry and the author. The 
results which were obtained in studies of the relative economy of 
field-curing and siloing Indian corn (referred to later on p. 157) 
stated briefly show that, as an average of four years’ experimental 
work, a loss of 24 per cent of the dry matter and of crude protein 
was found in the case of shocks of corn left in the field for an 
average period of about two months. The results obtained else- 
where have shown that the figures given are rather low for ordinary 
farm conditions. Exposure to rain and storms, abrasion of dry 
leaves and thin stalks, and other factors, tend to diminish the 
nutritive value of the fodder, aside from the losses from fermenta- 
tions, so that very often only one-half of the feed materials originally 
present in the fodder is left by the time this is fed out. Further- 
more, the remaining portion of the fodder has a lower digestibility 
and a lower feeding value than the fodder corn had when shocked, 
for the reason that the fermentations occurring during the curing 
process attack the most valuable and easily digestible components 
