Official 1Repovt6, 
THE COMPARATIVE FEEDING VALUES OF 
DECORTICATED AND UNDECORTICATED 
COTTON-CAKE. 
A record of feeding experiments conducted at the Society's Experi- 
mental Farm, Wohurn, in the years 1888-9 and 1890-1. 
An important question, but one upon which practical farmers are 
not agreed, is, -whether decorticated or undecorticated cake is the 
better form in which to make use of the refuse cotton-seed for the 
purpose of feeding stock. Both, it is admitted, are valuable 
and economical foods, but some feeders maintain that the unde- 
corticated or common cotton-cake is the safer and better to use, 
because it is free from the hardness and the indigestible lumps 
which too often characterise the decorticated cake, and because the 
husk left with it imparts a wholesome astringency to the diet. Others 
who have had experience of the decorticated cake are ready, on the 
contrary, to maintain that, if reasonable precaution be exercised, 
and the worst class of cake be avoided, there is no difficulty in 
feeding with it, and that it will amply repay the trouble and give a 
decidedly better result. 
To aid in settling such questions is manifestly the work of an 
experimental farm such as that which the Society, through the 
generosity of the Duke of Bedford, is enabled to carry on at Woburn. 
The results of trials made in two different years, in the one 
case with Hereford cattle, in the other with Shorthorns, are now 
given. It may be said that the past experience at TVoburn has 
been to show that, from the commencement in 1877 to the present 
time, although decorticated cotton cake has been used every year, 
and only the ordinary quality purchased that happened to be in the 
market at the time, no difficulty whatever with, or harm resulting 
from the use of, decorticated cotton-cake has been experienced 
throughout. 
EXPERIMEXT of 1888-9. 
The bullocks were eight in number, all Herefords, three years old, 
and they cost, in October 1888, 111. 9s. each. The specially con- 
structed feeding-boxes, holding in all eight beasts, were used. Four 
VOL. II. T. S. — 7 Q Q 
