-23- 
up to one and a quarter pounds. This extra grain may be corn meal, 
cotton-seed meal, or linseed meal; in other words, any grain that has 
considerable oil which seems to help the digestion and enable the 
sheep to handle a larger amount of grain. 
Most of the wheat fed near Fort Collins the past winter was un- 
ground. Considerable of this goes through undigested, and there is 
apparently no foundation for the claim made by the Nebraska feeders, 
that much of the nutriment has been taken out of this grain which 
passes whole. It is practically certain that no nourishment is received 
from it. It is probable that a very large amount of loss occurred 
in this vicinity last winter from this whole grain feeding, and that 
much of the trouble the feeders had from their first shipments of 
sheep not being fat was due to this cause. 
It would be difficult to so say what portion of the wheat passes 
whole, but probably ten per cent, is a small estimate. When 
whole wheat was fed at the College Farm, the droppings appeared to 
have fully half as much wheat as the sheep ate. 
There are men with portable mills who will grind wheat on the 
premises for three cents per hundred pounds, and the probabilities 
seem to be that the increased value is at least ten cents per hundred. 
It is a significant fact that the first bunch of sheep that went to the 
Chicago market last spring that had been fed on cracked wheat re¬ 
ceived a higher price than any other bunch, enough higher to pay for 
half the grain they had eaten. 
The question of the comparative feeding value of wheat and corn 
for sheep is a long way from being decided. From 1891 to 1894 
most of the grain fed to sheep in Colorado was corn, shipped in from 
Nebraska at about seventy-five cents per hundred. The partial failure 
of the corn crop of 1894 raised the price to over a cent a pound, while 
wheat could be bought for sixty-five cents to seventy-five cents per 
hundred pounds. Consequently, wheat was the principal grain fed 
from November 1894 to March 1895. Judged by its composition, 
wheat is well-adapted to making growth on an animal, and feeders were 
well satisfied with the gain in weight made by their sheep during the 
earlier part of the season. The first shipments showed that the sheep 
were not so fat as they seemed to be. They had made a growth in weight, 
but their flesh was soft and watery. They lacked the hard, solid kid¬ 
ney fat that had been a distinguishing feature of Colorado corn-fed 
sheep. The shrinkage of weight in shipping was nearly twice as 
much as in previous years on corn feeding. 
So pronounced were these results of exclusive wheat feeding that, 
during April and May, many carloads of corn were bought, and 
some feeders claimed that they could afford to pay twenty-five dollars 
a ton for corn to finish off their sheep for market. 
Several thousand old sheep were brought to Fort Collins and put 
on a heavy feed of wheat to fatten them rapidly for market. But, 
instead of fattening, the combination of wheat and alfalfa, both rich 
