Hauling will always be an item of cost, but varies from 
eight hours for man and team, to thirty hours according to 
distance to be hauled and facilities for hauling. 
The time and expense for planting and cultivating the 
crop, will be about the same whether the yield is large or 
small. The expense of harvesting has been figured on the 
basis of twelve tons to the acre and will rise or fall accord- 
ing as the crop is greater or less. 
binder the varying prices of labor, the ease with which 
the land can be worked, and the size of the crop, the cost of 
raising and marketing an acre of sugar beets has varied at 
different places in the United States from $30 to $45, and 
the cost per ton of beets from $2 to $4. 
Beets are usually paid for according to their richness, 
the prices varying from $4 to $5 per ton and the returns per 
acre will average not far from $so. About eleven tons of 
sugar beets per acre at $4.50 per ton is a fair average crop, 
with a possibility of more than twenty tons at $5 
per ton. As compared with $10 for the crop from the same 
land put into alfalfa, or $12 for the wheat it would raise, 
this return seems rather large, but of course there is a much 
larger amount of labor required to produce this return. 
FEEDING VALUE. 
Sugar beets have a high value for stock feed. They 
belong to the class of concentrated feeds in spit^e of the 
large amount of water they contain and are to be compared 
as a feed with grain rather than hay. 
It is probable that the dry matter of beets has about the 
same value, pound for pound as the dry digestible matter in 
grain. On that basis, a pound of grain would have as much 
feeding value as four and one-half or five pounds of beets. 
Sugar beets have been fed to stock at the College with 
very good results except where fed to steers. When the 
feeding is done out doors in cold weather, they seem to be 
too watery for profitable feeding to steers. They are ex- 
cellent feed for milch cows and will take the place of grain 
for fattening lambs during the first half of the feeding 
period. • It is advisable not to feed them during the last six 
weeks before marketing, giving grain at that time so that 
the flesh and fat may harden for shipment. Stock sheep 
and breeding ewes do well on beets all winter. They can 
even form profitably a portion of the food of breeding sows^ 
FEEDING VALUE OF LEAVES AND TOPS. 
For every one hundred pounds of beets harvested there 
will be from fifty to sixty pounds of tops. These tops have 
