376 
AGRICULTURE: HART, AND OTHERS 
gave fair growth, but complete failure in reproduction with heifers, 
while a ^balanced' ration from the corn plant was successful. 
In our attempts to locate the trouble in the all wheat ration, wheat 
grain — wheat straw — we have fed rations made up of corn grain and 
wheat straw. Here the offspring were weak and often born dead. 
When to that same ration, however, a suitable salt mixture was added 
so that the ash content of the ration was like that of the all corn ration 
perfect offspring resulted. This would clearly indicate that one of the 
deficiencies of an all wheat plant ration was a proper salt mixture. 
When, however, the corn grain in the above ration was displaced by 
the wheat grain and the ration consisted of wheat grain — wheat straw 
and salts, disaster again resulted, which showed the presence of another 
disturbing factor in the wheat grain. Calves born by mothers upon 
this ration showed peculiar deflections of the head, inability to get up 
and suckle the mother, and in most cases have died within a few hours 
after birth. 
These experiments indicate that in the all wheat plant ration there 
were two factors operative against normal nutrition, namely, a poor 
salt mixture and inherent toxicity of the wheat grain. When the wheat 
grain was coupled with corn stover we have sometimes met with suc- 
cess and sometimes with failure in the character of the offspring. With 
strong mothers it appears that the corn stover may become an 'anti- 
dote' and thereby furnish sufficient of all the normal factors of nutri- 
tion so as to enable the animal to reproduce normally. 
The possibiHty of the toxicity being destroyed by heat was also in- 
vestigated and baked wheat was fed with corn stover. This had no 
effect whatever in improving the wheat kernel. 
In other cases the wheat grain-corn stover ration had butter fat 
added to it for the purpose of supplying, plentifully the growth promot- 
ing — factor-fat soluble A — now known to be necessary for growth and 
supplied abundantly in butter fat. It was thought possible that the 
wheat grain-wheat straw ration was somewhat deficient in .this material. 
Butter fat additions, however, did not uniformly improve the ration. 
We had a number of failures in reproduction, and also a number of suc- 
cesses with its use. This would again emphasize the probability of the 
presence of a toxic substance in the wheat grain. 
When, however, the wheat grain was mixed with a legume hay, such 
as alfalfa, so that the latter formed but 20% of the ration, we have had 
perfect success in all cases in the production of normal offspring, at 
least for the first gestation. The improvement resulting from the use 
of the alfalfa must lie in introducing into the ration a better salt mix- 
