ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 53 



Mr. Dietz: A farmer told me the other day that a certain 

 mill man had told him that rye bran came nearer to being an 

 ideal dairy food than anything else. I took the trouble to 

 look up the reports in the Department of Agriculture, and I 

 found that the proportions of protein to carbo-hydrates in rye 

 bran come as near to the standard established by Prof. Wohl 

 and others as any food we have. So there may be something 

 in that statement. What do you think of it, Professor? 



Prof. Haecker: We cannot measure all our food stuff 

 by the chemical analysis. Cows don't like rye; you can feed 

 them a little rye with impunity, but when you come to feed 

 them a heavy ration they rebel. Besides that, rye bran 

 is not produced in suflScient quantities to supply the market, 

 even if it were good. Now, a word in regard to the food 

 value of bran. I have a table here prepared after our five 

 years' work with different kinds of feed stuffs that gives the 

 comparative value of the different kinds, and I find that if it 

 is palatable, then the cheapest ration that we can produce of 

 the different kinds of nutrients properly balanced is the best 

 food for the cow, no matter whether it is bran, corn, wheat, 

 oil meal, cotton seed meal or anything else. W^hat is the 

 value of bran here? 



The Chairman : About |9 ; |10 in sacks, I think. 



Prof. Haecker: If bran is worth |9, then corn is worth 

 21 cents a bushel; oats 12 cents a bushel; rye, 24; wheat, 25; 

 that is the feeding value for the dairy cow. 



Mr. Larkin: Do you mean to be understood that we 

 might throw out bran and feed 21-cent corn without bran? 



Prof. Haecker: No; we must have the proper ration. 

 When timothy hay is worth |8 a ton, fodder corn is worth 

 $6.12, prairie hsij, |8, clover hay, |17.88, over twice the value 

 of timothy hay. 



Mr. Larkin : I notice in 3^our diagram the fact that these 

 two cows, Ethel and Houston, ran along nearly parallel for 

 a given time. Now, have you any experience along this line 

 to give us. Supose I owned those two cows, and at the end 

 of three or four months, or any given time, when they began 

 to diverge in the results, I had turned off the Durham cow, 

 weighing 1,300 pounds and bought another. The difference 



