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, 
