82 Western Live-stock Management 
on hay by filling up the racks in the morning and then not 
going near them until the next day. Even feeding twice 
a day will not give satisfactory results as compared with 
feeding three or four times. When large numbers of 
cattle are fed, the feed is hauled continually throughout 
the day and the cattle are generally fed four to five or six 
times during the day. One man and a team can feed in 
this way from 80 to 100 cattle. The tops and bottoms of 
the stacks, if at all bad, should never be put into the racks, 
but rather scattered on the ground or fed to stock animals. 
If scattered out on the ground for the steers, they will 
waste all the bad parts of the hay; but it is much more 
economical to let fattening steers waste bad hay than to 
allow them to become hungry enough to eat it. Whenever 
the ground is dry or frozen and there is plenty of room, it 
is a very good practice to feed about one load a day on 
the ground the first thing in the morning. Cattle would 
rather eat hay off the ground than from the racks, and 
if fed one load in this way they will clean it up with very 
little waste. Experiments have shown that a lot of a 
hundred steers will eat about as much out of the racks 
during the day with this extra load on the ground asthey 
will without it. When the cattle are allowed to run in a 
field of a considerable size, it is possible to scatter the 
manure over the field in this manner, but of course when 
the ground is muddy all the hay must be fed in racks. 
Chopped hay or alfalfa meal must be fed several times a 
day, just as the long hay, but ordinarily the cattle will 
clean it up well and there will be very little waste. 
LENGTH OF FEEDING PERIOD 
The length of the feeding period will not be as great 
as in the East where, as we have noted, it is usually about 
