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Home-c;roavn Corn and Potatoes for Live Stock. [Dec, 



For fattening hogs wheat may be used up to one-third of their 

 total ration, and in this ease it should be fairly finely ground 

 together with the rest of the ration and made into slop. 



For milch cows, ground wheat may form as much as one 

 quarter of their total ration of concentrated food. Thus, sup- 

 posing the ration consists of roots or silage, hay or straw, and 

 8 lb. of concentrated foods, the concentrated foods may consist 

 of 6 lb. of cake and 2 lb. of sfround wheat. In this case 

 the ground w^heat is usually mixed with the chaff and pulped 

 roots and allowed to stand some time before feeding. This 

 method of feeding prevents the wheat becoming pasty in the 

 mouth. 



Rye on the whole is not of good repute as a feeding stuff in 

 this country. It can, however, be used successfully for pigs in 

 the same way as wheat, provided the ration contains a little fish- 

 meal or dried blood to supply constituents in which the rye is 

 deficient. Skim milk or whey would also provide these absent 

 constituents, or they could be supplied in the form of fresh roots 

 or green-stuff. 



Barley is much better known as a feeding stuff for live stock 

 than either wheat or rye ; in fact, the annual consumption of 

 barley by live stock in the United Kingdom is not far short of 

 a million tons. It can be used safely and economically for 

 almost all kinds of stock except suckling sows and ewes and milch 

 •cows. The general opinion of practical stock keepers is that the 

 use of barley for milking animals of any kind very soon produces 

 a fall in the milk flow. 



In the Eastern Counties, where the climate is too hot lor the 

 oat crop, barley is the standard horse corn. If used for horses 

 it should be remembered that about 6 lb. of barley contain as 

 much nutritive value as 7 lb. of oats, :and in replacing part of the 

 oats in a ration by barley, the replacement should be in these 

 proportions, that is to say, 14 oz. of barley for 1 lb. of oats. 



For fattening sheep barley is an excellent food, but when the 

 sheep are on roots, which are poor in protein, the barley should 

 be mixed with some other concentrated feeding stuff rich in that 

 <M3nstituent. A series of trials carried out years ago by the Nor- 

 folk Chamber of Agriculture showed that by far the best addition 

 to barley is decorticated cotton cake. For three years in succes- 

 sion a mixture of equal weights of crushed barley and decorti- 

 cated cotton cake produced more mutton at less cost than any 

 -other mixture included in the trial. 



