780 Home-grown Corn and Potatoes for Live Stock. [Dec, 



HOME-GROWN CORN AND POTATOES 



FOR LIVE STOCK. 



T. B. Wood, C.B.E., M.A., F.I.C., F.R.S., 



Drapers' Professor of Agriculture and Fellow of Gonville and 



Cains College, Cambridge. 



Under normal conditions farmers grow their wheat and barley 

 for sale to the miller and the maltster, and their potatoes for 

 the market. Conditions this year, however, are far from normal, 

 and everyone should consider whether it will pay him best to 

 sell his corn and potatoes or to use them for feeding live stock. 



This is a point which it is by no means easy to decide, as so 

 many things must be taken into consideration. It is necessary 

 to know not only the relative food and manurial values and the 

 relative prices of similar feeding stuffs, but the price at which 

 it is possible to buy suitable animals to be fed, and even perhaps 

 in some cases, after two disastrous years, whether it might not 

 ease the situation to sell corn and potatoes for ready cash and 

 to buy even dearer feeding stuffs on credit. 



It is impossible to deal here w^ith such economic considerations, 

 which must be decided by each farmer for himself. It is pos- 

 sible, however, to consider the relative feeding value of home- 

 grown and purchased feeding stuffs, and to work out prices at 

 which, other things being equal, it is cheaper to consume corn 

 and potatoes at home than to sell them and to buy other feeding 

 stuffs. 



Even this is not quite straightforward, for the comparison 

 should be made, not on price per ton, but on price per unit of 

 nutritive value after making due allowance for manurial value. 

 The best unit of nutritive value to select for this purpose is 

 one hundredth of a ton of what is known as starch equivalent 

 or net digestible energy. 



Wheat, barley, oats, and potatoes are all somewhat similar in 

 composition. All of them are characterised by the high propor- 

 tion of starch which they contain. On the farm they could, 

 therefore, be used to take the place of other feeding stuffs rich 

 in starch, as, for example, middlings and maize. It is with 

 these feeding stuffs that they should be compared. 



Feeding Value of Middlings and Maize. — A ton of middlings 

 contains 68 units of starch equivalent. The present price per 

 ton is round about £S and the manurial value is £1 7s. Deduct- 

 ing the manurial value, the net cost of the 68 units of starch 



