I. FATTENING STEERS ON SUMMER PASTURE. 
ALABAMA, 1912. 
OBJECTS AND PLAN OF THE EXPERIMENT. 
The general plan of the work was similar to that followed in previ- 
ous years. Usually the steers were purchased in the fall, carried 
through the winter, divided into lots in the spring, and put on pasture 
as soon as the grasses were well started. In this experiment most of 
the steers were purchased late in the spring and put on pasture late 
in May, with the intention of finishing them for market early in the 
fall. 
The 90 steers available were divided and fed as follows : 
Lot 1, 29 steers, pasture alone. 
Lot 2, 25 steers, pasture and one-half corn chop and one-half cottonseed cake. 
Lot 3, 36 steers, pasture and cottonseed cake. 
The lots were purposely unequal in number to conform to the size 
of pasture used. 
The objects of the experiment were (1) to continue the study of 
fattening steers on pasture; (2) to determine whether it is profitable 
to feed cottonseed cake to cattle on pasture; (3) to compare cotton- 
seed cake with a ration of one-half cottonseed cake and one-half corn 
chop for finishing steers on pasture ; and (4) to see which of the three 
methods is most profitable. 
The steers of the three lots were chiefly grade Herefords, Short- 
horns, and Aberdeen-Angus. A few were grade Red Polls. All 
were 2 and 3 year olds of fair quality. 
CHARACTER AND PRICES OF FEEDS USED. 
The cottonseed cake used in this test was nut size and of good 
quality, containing about 38 per cent crude protein. The advantages 
of feeding cake instead of meal are these: Rains do not make the 
cake unpalatable and winds do not blow it out of the feed bunks ; the 
cake requires chewing, and greedy steers can not eat more than their 
share at the expense of the timid ones. When cottonseed meal is 
fed in open pastures, rain and wind are liable to cause waste ; greedy 
steers bolt it and often get scours, which causes the animals to feed 
out unevenly. 
The corn was shipped in and part of it was badly damaged. That 
fact must be considered when comparing the gains of the steers in 
lot 2 with those of the other lots. The cottonseed cake cost $28 a 
ton on the farm. The corn chop was charged to the steers of lot 2 
at an average price of 85| cents a bushel. 
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