UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
BULLETIN No. 615 
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Joint Contribution from the Office of Farm Management, j^j 
W. J. SPILLMAN, Chief, and the Bureau of 
Animal Industry, A. D. MELVIN, Chief. $** ^*ft~ 
Washington, D. C. 
November 15, 1917 
THE ECONOMICAL WINTER FEEDING OF BEEF 
COWS IN THE CORN BELT. 
By J. S. Cotton, Office of Farm Management, and Edmund H. Thompson, 
Scientific Assistant, Bureau of Animal Industry. 
CONTENTS. 
The reed for more economic feeding of breed- 
ing cows • 1 
Breeding herds must get most of their living 
from farm by-products 2 
Avoid feeding excessive rations 4 
Page. 
Avoid costly rations 6 
Use more cheap roughage 6 
Use available feeds most economically 8 
Study of rations on selected farms 11 
THE NEED FOR MORE ECONOMICAL FEEDING OF BREEDING 
COWS. 
A great many farmers in the corn-belt States keep cows of the 
beef or the dual purpose type for the production of feeder calves. On 
the smaller farms, having twenty cows or less, the custom is to milk 
the cows and to sell milk products, usually cream. The calves from 
some of these farms are sold to other farmers, who make a practice 
of purchasing such animals and of feeding them out in carload lots. 
Some farmers, however, make a practice of finishing their own calves 
and enough more calves bought from their neighbors to enable them 
to fill out a carload. On the larger farms, twenty cows or more 
usually are kept only for the production of feeder calves, which 
usually are fed out on the same farm as baby beef, or as two-year- 
olds, or three-year-olds. On some of the farms of the above-described 
types calves are produced at a substantial profit, and on others, calves 
are produced at a heavy loss. 
Although there are a number of factors that govern the profitable- 
ness of the calf-growing enterprise, an investigation carried on by 
the United States Department of Agriculture in the corn-belt States 
13117°— 17 
