DRY-FARMING CONGRESS, WICHITA, 1914 



67 



in favor of a ration something like this: Twenty to twenty-five pounds of 

 silage; % pound of cottonseed meal; and roughness such as wheat straw, 

 kafir, or sorghum butts, or threshed kafir. With the ration 

 mentioned above two and three year old steers have come through the win- 

 ter stronger and done better than other steers getting larger amounts of 

 cake and run on good native grass or fed much larger amounts of dry 

 roughness such as good bundle kafir or sorghum. 



It has been demonstrated many times that good gains can be made in 

 fattening mature steers with a ration of cottonseed meal and " silage. 

 When getting only this ration a 900 to 1000 pound steer will eat about 50 

 or 60 pounds of silage and should receive five or six pounds of cottonseed 

 meal; however, it is probably a better idea to give the steers just about 

 what silage they will clean up readily within an hour and a half to two 

 hours and then keep some dry roughness before them all the time. Feed 

 twice a day. 



Last winter some work was done in the Texas Panhandle to determine 

 the relative gains that steers would make when fed a full ration of cotton- 

 seed meal and silage and steers getting the same amount of cake, yet run- 

 ning on good native grass. The steers were good grade Hereford steers of 

 average Panhandle quality and two years old. On account of shortness of 

 feed the steers were only fed 48 days, so one can see that the steers were 

 not by any means finished but were just well started on a feeding period. 

 At the end of 48 days both lots of cattle were shipped to Kansas City and 

 sold on the market, both bunches going to feeders. Below is given the 



data obtained in this feeding demonstration: 



Lot I* Lot II* 



W T eight of steers at beginning of experiment 885 864 



Weight of steers at end of 1st 30 days 907 969 



Weight of steers at end of feeding period (48 days) 897 1006 



Grain for entire feeding period (48) days 12 142 



Daily gain - % 3 



Value per pound at beginning of experiment $ 0.055 $ 0.055 



Value per steer at beginning of experiment 48.67 47.50 



Cost of cake or meal (308 pounds at $32 per ton) 4.93 4.93 



Cost of silage (2727 pounds at $3 per ton) _ 4.09 



Cots of grass (48 days at $0.40 a month) 4 0.64 



Cost of sorghum (79 pounds at $6 a ton) 0.24 



Cost of sorghum (10 pounds at $6 a ton) 0.03 



Cost of marketing, etc 4.05 4.05 



Total cost to put steer on the market 58.53 60.60 



Value per pound of cattle in Kansas City 0.07 0.0725 



Total value of cattle in Kansas City 59.00 68.00 



Profit 0.97 7.40 



*Lot I, cake and grass; lot II, meal and silage. 



The average feed of cake or meal was about six pounds a day, and 

 the average feed of silage was about 57 pounds. 



