COMPARISON OF ROUGHAGES FOR FATTENING STEERS. 
15 
market. This was due to finishing more uniformly and having bet- 
ter coats than the cattle fed on cottonseed hulls and meal. The steers 
of Lot 3, which made the largest gains of all the lots, sold for 
5 cents more per hundredweight than the steers of Lot 2, and made 
a profit of $55.31 on the lot, or an average profit of $2.13 per head. 
The feeding of cottonseed hulls and meal in this experiment was 
unprofitable, whereas the feeding of corn silage or a combination of 
corn silage and cottonseed hulls with cottonseed meal as a concen- 
trate was profitable. The steers of both Lots 2 and 3, as a whole, 
showed more uniformity of finish than the steers of Lot 1, although 
some of the latter had gained exceedingly well and had finished out 
well. This is frequently the case when cottonseed hulls and meal 
are fed. Cattle fed on these feeds seldom finish out as uniformly as 
cattle which receive silage as a roughage. The steers were sold on 
a rather poor market, and if they could have been held three weeks 
longer they would have brought considerably more money and 
showed quite a nice profit. When all things are considered, the re- 
sults of the test were satisfactory and tend to emphasize the impor- 
tance of corn silage as a roughage for finishing steers for the market. 
SLAUGHTER DATA. 
In Table 7 are shown the results of the shipping and slaughtering 
of the steers in this experiment: 
Table 
7. — Slaughter data. 
Ration. 
Average 
farm 
weight 
per steer. 1 
Average 
market 
weight 
per steer. 
Average 
shrink- 
age in 
transit. 
Average 
weight 
of 
carcass. 
Per cent dressed. 
Lot 
No. 
By farm 
weights. 
By 
market 
weights. 
1 
Cottonseed meal and cottonseed 
hulls 
Pounds. 
996 
1,017 
1,033 
Pounds. 
944 
954 
978 
Pounds. 
52 
63 
55 
Pounds. 
531.6 
557.4 
566.8 
Per cent. 
53.40 
54.81 
54.85 
Per cent. 
56 27 
2 
3 
Cottonseed meal and corn silage. . . 
Cottonseed meal, cottonseed hulls, 
58.41 
57 97 
1 The final farm weights were taken April 11, six days after conclusion of the experiment; the market 
weights were taken three days later, April 14. 
The steers were driven from the feed lots to West Point, Miss., 
a distance of 12 miles, to be loaded on the cars. As they had to 
travel over a gravel road, some of them began getting tender footed 
before reaching the pens. They arrived at the loading pens in the 
afternoon, where they were given hay and had access to water, and 
were loaded the following morning. They were in transit 24 hours, 
and were sold and slaughtered the same day that they reached the 
market. 
The dressing percentages show that the steers of both Lots 2 and 
3 were finished somewhat better than the steers of Lot 1. The per- 
