206 THE BOOK OF CORN 



From the above it is seen that in every case the 

 soy bean meal had the effect of increasing the rate 

 of gain and of cheapening the cost of production. 

 Averaging all the work at the Kansas station, it was 

 found that the six lots of hogs having soy bean meal 

 as a part of the ration required 411 pounds of grain 

 for 100 pounds of gain, while the nineteen lots not fed 

 soy beans but given either kafir corn or corn, required 

 564 pounds of grain for 100 pounds of gain. 



Corn as a Feed for Horses — So much has been 

 • said against the feeding of work horses on an exclu- 

 sive grain ration of corn that much unreasonable preju- 

 dice has been aroused against its use for all classes of 

 horses. This is especially true of the horse owners of 

 the eastern states and of Europe. While it is not con- 

 tended that corn alone should be fed for any great 

 length of time to horses at work or young growing 

 animals, at the same time it is fundamentally true that 

 all things considered it is the most efficient and best 

 single grain for idle horses and for those performing 

 any class of work, and that it must form the basis of 

 the ration for this class of stock as it does for all others, 

 if due consideration is to be given to the economy of 

 production. Perhaps the most elaborate experiments 

 on record, in point of number of horses involved and 

 the length of time over which the observations have 

 extended, are those recently reported by M Lavalard 

 of France. His investigations were begun for the 

 Paris omnibus company, with the view of establishing 

 a rational basis for the feeding of the large number of 

 horses controlled by them under the different condi- 

 tions of work, and have already extended over a 

 period of twenty-five years, and later involved saddle 

 horses and light draft horses traveling at a rapid gait ; 

 horses hauling light loads, and heavy draft horses haul- 

 ing heavy loads at a slow pace. Altogether the obser- 



