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The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
October 23, !{>20 
Live Stock Questions 
Answered by Prof. F. C. Minkler 
Ration with Cob Meal 
1. How can I balance a ration from corn 
and cob meal, bran, oilmeal, cottonseed 
meal and ground oats? I would like to 
mix about 1.000 lbs. at a time. I have 
plenty of corn silage without corn and 
dry corn fodder; no hay or other rough- 
age. My cows are Holsteins and Guern¬ 
sey mixed, all freshening this and next 
month. 2. I have a registered Holstein 
bull six months, old that I wish a ration 
'for from above ingredients. w. E. j. 
Maryland. 
1. For your mixed herd of Holstein and 
Guernsey cows, where you have silage 
from which the ears have been stripped 
and an abundance of corn fodder, I would 
suggest the following grain ration, utiliz¬ 
ing the materials you have at hand: Corn 
and cob meal, 300 lbs.; ground oats, 200 
lbs.; cottonseed, 200 lbs; oilmeal, 200 
lbs.; bran. 100 lbs. It would be quite as 
Well to eliminate the cottonseed from the 
ration of the dry cows, for they do not 
require as much protein during this stage. 
2. Concerning a ration for the regis¬ 
tered Holstein bull six months old, I 
would use a mixture of 50 lbs. of ground 
oats, 35 lbs. of wheat bran, 15 lbs. of oil¬ 
meal. 
can scarcely afford to feed milk worth 
15 cents a quart to a calf unless the calf 
has a real potential value. 
In addition to the sweet corn that you 
are supplying the cow in question, I 
should give her considerable grain, and 
the combination might be equal parts of 
corn or hominy meal, oilmeal, oats and 
bran. Let her have access to as much 
hay as she will clean up with relish dur¬ 
ing the Winter. I should provide either 
some mangel beets or some moistened 
beet pulp as a source of succulence. If 
she is giving you 12 or 13 qts. of milk a 
day, she is doing nicely, and you can 
afford to feed 1 lb. of grain for each 3% 
lbs. of milk produced per day. 
Feeding Sixty Cows 
We have about 60 cows, and are feed¬ 
ing at present 300 lbs. mixed feed, 100 
lbs. cottonseed meal, 100 lbs. gluten; we 
feed 1 lb. of grain to each 3 lbs. of milk 
received. We have cornmeal, but do not 
feed it in the ration. H. r. w. 
Maine. 
If you have an abundance of corn 
there is no reason why it should not be 
incorporated in a ration intended for 
dairy cows. It is highly digestible and 
provides heat and energy more economi¬ 
cally than any other material available. 
I do not know as to the virtues of the 
mixed feed that you are utilizing, but do 
know that a useful ration would result 
from the following combination : 500 lbs. 
of corn-andi-eob meal, 200 lbs. of cotton¬ 
seed meal, 200 lbs. of gluten, 100 lbs. of 
bran, 100 lbs. of ground oats. If you 
have a quantity of the mixed feed on hand 
you could include 400 lbs. of this mixture 
with the above combination. In addition, 
feed the cows all of the roughage that 
they will consume, preferably clover or 
Alfalfa hay, and as Winter approaches 
silage or some form of succulence should 
be given. 
Feeding Young Cow 
I have a high-grade Guernsey heifer 
that will be three years old in December. 
She freshened May 1. She is fair size, 
in good condition, but does not do as 
well in milk and butter as we think she 
ought, making only about four pounds per 
week, and earlier made about six. Her 
milk seems rich. She was in pasture six 
weeks from about May 20, when I began 
to feed her oats, peas and buckwheat, 
green, and baited her about the yard. 
Now she has sweet corn, with some ears 
left on, right for boiling almost exclu¬ 
sively. What should I feed in addition? 
New York. n. g. 
If you will feed in addition to the sweet 
corn a grain ration consisting of equal 
parts of ground oats, oilmeal and wheat 
bran it would be possible for you to in¬ 
crease the production of your Guernsey 
heifer. Corn in itself does not constitute 
a balanced ration, even though it be used 
as a supplement to pasture. At this 
season there is very little nourishment 
or succulence in old pasture grass, and 
this, no doubt, is the cause of the con¬ 
dition you describe. A little later on. 
when you have no succulence supplied 
through pasture, add some moistened beet 
pulp to this combination, and double the 
amount of oilmeal used. Feed her the 
equivalent of 8 lbs. of grain per day, and 
give her, in addition, all of the roughage, 
such as hay or cornstalks, that she will 
clean up with relish. 
A young salesman who had been reared 
in the city was traveling through the 
mountains of Virginia. On the top of a 
divide he met the star-route mail-carrier. 
“What time is it?” he asked. Pulling 
out his watch, the mail-carrier deliberate¬ 
ly replied : “It’s three o’clock by railroad 
time.” “Biy railroad time!” ‘said (the 
young man. “It looks to me like you 
people ’way back here in the mountains 
would use sun time!” “What for, youug 
man? We are a blamed sight closer to 
the railroad than we are to the sun.”— 
Everybody’s Magazine. 
He should be fed from 6 to 8 lbs. per 
day of this ration, together with all of the 
roughage that he would consume. Some 
Alfalfa or clover hay could be used to 
advantage in feeding this young bull, for 
legumes of this character carry a rela¬ 
tively large percentage of ash and min¬ 
eral matter that are conducive to growth 
and development in youug animals. As 
the bull reaches maturity I should not 
give him all of the roughage that he will 
consume, which is a common mistake 
among dairy cattle feeders. The mere 
fact that the bull is stabled for the most 
part in the barn prompts them to feed 
him generously on roughage and other 
residue products which the cows perhaps 
might leave, and as a result he becomes 
paunchy and inactive. 
The ration that I have suggested, 
while perhaps more expensive than one 
compounded from the more economical 
sources of both carbohydrate and protein, 
is better suited for feeding breeding bulls 
than any combination that I know of. 
Raising Heifer Calf 
I have just bought a nine-year-old cow 
with heifer calf 18 days old. I want to 
raise this heifer. I am feeding this calf 
about 7 qts. per day sweet milk from cow. 
I am getting 12 to 13 qts. milk per day. 
I can sell all the milk I can make at 15c 
per qt. How much milk should I feed 
this calf? Can I feed some grain? I 
would like to sell more milk. Can you 
give me a pointer on feeding cow? I have 
all the sweet cornstalks from my garden 
and the neighbors’ for a cou le of months. 
All the grass I have is from the lawn. 
Schenectady Co., N. Y. j. B. 
'It is a common practice to overfeed 
rather than underfeed young calves of 
this age. Skim-milk could be substituted 
in this calf’s ration after the youngster 
is two months old, and I should feed her 
two or three weeks on new milk, utiliz¬ 
ing not more than five or six quarto per 
day, and distributing it in two feedings, 
morning and night. At the end of this 
period I should gradually substitute skim- 
milk for the new milk, reducing the new 
milk one pound a day and increasing the 
skim-milk an equal amount until the 
complete change from new milk to skim- 
milk took place, in about 10 days. I 
should never feed more than 16 or 18 lbs. 
of the skim-milk, even though it were 
plentiful, and I should continue this 
amount until the calf was about six 
months old. 
At four months she will commence to 
nibble at clover or Alfalfa hay, and it 
would be well to keep before her a grain 
mixture consisting of wheat middlings, 
ground oats, wheat bran and oilmeal, 
mixed in equal proportions. As soon as 
her digestive organs are sufficiently de¬ 
veloped to eat grain and hay, the milk 
can be reduced, but most feeders find it 
advantageous to feed the calf 180 days. 
It will be a simple matter for you to 
calculate whether it will be profitable 
for you to feed 15-cents-a-quart milk to 
a heifer calf that you propose to raise. 
It might be cheaper for you to buy a 
yearling or a two-year-old heifer that has 
been produced on a farm where milk has 
less value than you have indicated. One 
Water, Milk j/k/M oney 
If water were labeled H 2 0, - and sold 
by the barrel at a fancy price- 
more might appreciate its value 
dairy cow’s ration and its importance in 
the making of milk. 
A cow makes milk from two things: 
Feed and water. 
Feed costs money, and yet very few 
of our dairy cows are being starved for 
want of it. 
It is common knowledge that the cow 
that does not get enough to eat does not 
produce as much milk as she could pro¬ 
duce, nor produce as cheaply. 
It should be common knowledge, too, 
that the cow that does not get enough 
water to drink produces too little. 
Water costs practically nothing, 
and yet many, very, very many of 
our dairy cows thirst for want of it. 
How James Cups 
Make More Milk 
James cups give cows all the 
water they want, when they want 
it, day or night. How wonderfully 
milk yields are increased thereby 
is shown by an investigation made 
in 28 herds, using James cups, 
where milk records were kept. 
One herd showed an increase of 
from 5 up to as high as 10 lbs. per 
cow, per day,—just as a result of 
the James cups. 
Four herds reported an average increase 
of 4 lbs. per cow per day; three stated 3 lbs.; 
five showed 2 lbs.; three 1 1-2 lbs.; one 3-4 
lbs.; one reported an increase in milk yield 
valued at $8.56 per cow, per year; one aver¬ 
aged $5; one $10; one received 3 per cent 
increase; one 8 per cent; two 10 per cent; 
one 20 per cent; one 33 1-3 per cent and 
only one herd out of the 28 found that the 
increase was “Not much”. 
And now you ask yourself the question, 
“Can I afford James cups in my barn?” 
“Would it not be better to wait until next 
year?” 
Neither of 
these questions 
has anything to 
do with the mat¬ 
ter. 
The real quest¬ 
ion is “Can you 
affordto be with¬ 
out James cups?” 
the 
in 
What You Lose 
By Waiting 
The plain fact is that if next year some 
one were to make you a gift of the James 
cups, you would lose money by waiting. 
Two pounds milk per cow per day, for 
the 200 days the cows are in the barn 
means 400 lbs. of milk, which at $3 per 
cwt., is a total of $12 for the season. 
c lames Jttanufaeturing Company, (Slmira, cy\e)v Jpork. 
Labor Saving Equipment for the Dairy Dam 
In these days, when feed and other costs 
are high, can you afford to neglect this 
extra profit? 
Don’t put off this drinking cup proposi¬ 
tion a single day. Write us at once for a 
definite price estimate covering a drinking 
cup installation for your barn. 
If you are interested in other labor-sav¬ 
ing equipment for the dairy barn such as 
cow stalls, carriers, steel pens, ventilators, 
etc., or if you are interested in u -ot-eht- 
minute ideas in 
the planning of 
a new barn, ask 
also for our big 
barn building 
and barn equip¬ 
ment book “The 
James Way No. 
30.” 
way 
he Dairy Dam w 
