Fattening for Market 411 
it is used to excess. In the many tests that have been 
conducted with alfalfa pasture or hay, without grain, it is 
only rarely that the pigs have made any gain. The best 
results have so far been obtained where the pigs were 
given grain in a self-feeder and so not forced to consume 
any more alfalfa than they wished. When such supple- 
ments as skim-milk or tankage are available at reasonable 
rates, they may be profitably used in addition to the 
alfalfa but of course in smaller quantities than when no 
alfalfa is used. Bran, like alfalfa hay, carries too much 
bulk to be desirable feed for fattening pigs and in addition 
is very expensive on the basis of the nutrients contained. 
Middlings and shorts can be depended on for a consider- 
able part of the supplemental protein if they may be 
procured for little more than the price of the grain fed, 
and the distance to haul is not too great. Linseed-oil 
meal is used to a considerable extent in the North Central 
states, but even if flax-growing should assume consider- 
able proportions in the Northwest, the price of oil meal will 
never be low here on account of its value to the dairy- 
man. Soybean meal is being imported in small quantities 
from Manchuria and it is barely possible that it may be 
unloaded on the Pacific Coast at a price which will make it 
available as a supplemental pig feed. Since soybean meal 
has about the same percentage of protein as linseed-oil 
meal and very nearly the same carbohydrate equivalent, 
it is evident that it should be procured at practically 
the same price, or less than the latter, else there is no 
inducement for using it in preference to American-grown 
products. Cotton-seed meal has a third more protein, 
as well as a little more digestible carbohydrates than the 
two above named meals but because of the poisonous effect 
it exerts when fed in large quantities to pigs, it should not 
