4 
BULLETIN 75. 
Many of our farmers have been convinced of the great 
worth of sugar beets in a ration for fattening stock, and in 
some instances they have paid more for beets for feeding 
than the factory would pay for manufacturing purposes. 
This makes the question of the value of sugar beets for 
feeding a live one, and we here report experiments which 
were carried out to throw light on this subject. 
Sugar beets for fattening hogs were tried last year, and 
the results indicated that they were not so valuable for that 
purpose as many have supposed. These experiments are 
reported in the bulletin on “Swine Feeding in Colorado.” 
It is well known, however, that a food suitable for one class 
of stock may not be suitable for another, and the results 
obtained with beets or pulp when fed to swine do not indi¬ 
cate what their nutritive quality would be when fed to 
lambs or cattle. Pigs require a concentrated ration, and 
while they may be, and in our trials were, able to live and 
make small gains when fed with beets alone, the ration was 
a bulky one and did not prove profitable. Pigs do not 
ordinarily live on dry hay, while lambs or cattle may lay on 
fat with such bulky rations, making good returns for the 
roughage consumed. Feeding beets or pulp to lambs along 
with alfalfa is very different from feeding these products to 
pigs when given either with or without grains or other con¬ 
centrated foods. 
The second experiment reported was inaugurated to 
compare home grown or small grains with corn, which is 
shipped in in great quantities by our sheep feeders, and dur¬ 
ing the past year, at least, has cost them much more than 
the grains which they raise on their own farms could be 
sold for. Many have an idea that stock of any kind can¬ 
not be fattened and properly fitted for market without us¬ 
ing corn. Investigations in eastern states have shown that 
wheat is as valuable as corn for fattening stock. Our own 
experiments with fattening swine reported in the bulletin 
entitled “Swine Feeding in Colorado,” show that mixtures 
of wheat and barley are preferable to corn for fattening 
pigs when either grain can be obtained at the same price 
as corn. 
Occasionally there is introduced into the state, some¬ 
thing new, either a new grain or a new variety which is 
given notoriety through the papers and which many go to 
considerable expense to obtain before they can know much 
about it. The Russian Spelt or Emmer is one of these, and 
in our sheep feeding trials its value has been carefully in¬ 
vestigated. Russian Spelt, as it is popularly called (more 
