The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-01-02
Stock Feeding.

Stock Feeding.
Mr.. Waldo f. Brown, a noted stockman,
has for several years made study of stock
feeding and is convinced that one of the
greatest wastes Of the farm comes from ig
noranco or carelessness in that matter.
When the farmer goes to market with his
grain he is careful to find out the current
nrice and tries to get the top of the Market
and if he should drive to the grain dealer
with load of corn and sell it to him for
2Oc bushel when the established price was
4Oc he would be thought a fit candidate for
the lunatic asylum, yet practically this is
done by large per cent. Of farmers who
feed stock. This failure to get the most he
can from his grain varies with different
farmers in degree and cause, and it may be
profitable for us to ask, how! l. There is a
large aggregate loss Of food from feeding
grain to ill-bred stock, or to stock unsuited
to the purpose for which it is kept The
dairvman who has made no test of his in
dividual cows will be fortunate when he
tests each COW separately if he does not find
one or two cows out of each twelve whose
milk is so poor that he is keeping them at a
loss, the milk and butter product actually
failing to pay for the food, while in the
same herd there are other cows giving a
handsome profit. A dairyman Of my ac-
ouaintance, milking twelve cows, on foot
ing up the amount of butter made from his
herd at the end Of the year found they had
averaged but 145 pounds each. He then
began systematic testing and wedding
out of the poor cows and better system of
feeding and gradually increased the yield of
his herd until in nine years he had an aver
age of 276 pounds per cow or nearly double
what he started with. 1t has been demon
strated thousand times over that grade
of short horn steer, sired by thoroughbred
will come into market a year earlier than
native, or will at three years old weigh from
, to 400 more and command a half cent or
a cent more than the native and will pay
from 33 to so per cent. more for the food
consumed. In the raising of horses there
is a still greater difference. The scrub
horse of no particular breed costs Just as
much to raise as grade Norman, Shire,
Clyde or Cleveland bay, and the scrub will
be slow sale, at half the price at which the
grades will sell and the latter will be in mar
ket one year sooner. The only differencein
the cost of raising one of these and the
common scrub is the service fee for the sire
There is no money in raising a scrub colt
but the raising of good grades always from
thoroughbred sires is largely profitable
Some of the leading horse breeders agree on
one point which is that the mare and foal
both are better off and more likely to do
well if the mare is worked regularly every
day up to foaling time, and this testimony
agrees with my own experience.
A second way in which farmers fail oget
the full value of food is by failing to feed
enough. Before a cow can use any of her
food to make milk or fat she must eat enough
to supply the waste of the system. To be
sure many cows are only fed enough for
this purpose and still give milk, but the milk
is produced at the expense of the animal;
first she parts with her fat and then her
muscle, and she grows thin and poor, be-
cause you do not give her food enough.
This food used to repair the waste of the
system is called ''the food of support" and
if growing animal is so sti- ted as to not
have enough food for this purpose it is per-
manently stinted in its growth so that there
is a loss in all food given it afterward. A
COW is in one sense a machine to make milk
and butter, and up to the limit of her ca
pacity she can consume profitably the food
given her. If, however, she is fed sparingly
she will first use the food necessary for her
support and give return in milk for the
remainder. Oftena farmer is keeping three
cows to produce ten pounds of butter a week
when the same amount of food fed to two
would give twelve or fourteen pounds a
week; in other words, the food used to
supply the waste of the system of the third
COW was lost, but when fed to the other two
it gave profit.