The Bossier banner., 1892-01-21
FARMER AND PLANTER.
FEEDING STOCK.
The Value of Cotton Seed Hulls as Stock
Food,


Food.
While cotton-seed hulls are admitted
on all sides to be an excellent rough
feed, do not think they have yet been
estimated high enough i'll comparison
with hay or other provender.
Having fed large quantities for two
years, regard them being worth more,
pound for pound, than average Ber-
muda or other grass hay. l feed per
day about eight to twelve pounds hulls,
four pounds wheat-bran and four
pounds cotton-seed meal, thoroughly
mixed together. with very satisfactory
results. This ration Is very cheap,
about ten cents per day, and the yield
and quality of milk highly satisfactory.
Hulls are much more easily handled
than hay, and there is less waste in
feeding, as the cows eat up the hulls
very clean.
In the spring of 1890, about the time
I thought there was getting to be abun-
1ant grass in pasture, my hulls gave
out. The milk yield began to fall off
so that l increased the bran and meal,
but never did I, during the whole
spring, get as good results as when
used hulls So l consider hulls fed in
connection with bran and cotton-seed
meaD equal to tolerably ample Ber-
muda pasture as milk producer.
Having found them such an excellent
food for cattle and knowing that cotton
seed meal is being fed to some extent to
horses, l reasoned that hulls ought also
to be good for horses. So l procured
some corn meal, and by mixing only a
very small quantity of cotton-seed meal
and hulls with bran and corn meal, sue
ceeded in making them eat it. The
quantity of hulls and meal was in
creased gradually until each animal
consumed about three pounds of meal
and considerable hulls.
The oil mills have started up again,
and 1 will commence right away to feed
hulls and meal to my horse stock.
never succeeded in getting them to eat
hulls and meal without mixing with
other food, and do not know whether
well-fed animals can be made to do so
or not. I will feed it as largely as I
can. 1t will very much lessen the ex-
pense of horse-feeding. Eight cents a
day in hulls and meal will keep
| thousand-pound work-ox fat. Why
should it not do the same for horse
of the same weight? We find horses and
oxen in their natural state eating the
| same kinds of food. What difference
| can exist between the digestive organs
| of the two animals, that one can thrive
| on food unsuited to the other? / am
sure that the horses and mules that
work the cotton fields of the south will
eventually be fed largely on cotton
| seed.
This writer can very well remember
| fhaving been raised on cotton farm
80 miles from railroadl when teams
of oxen would haul loads of cotton
away from the gin where hundreds of
bushels of seed were rotting, and
would have to pull in addition, enough
$1.50 corn to eat on the trip, and it
might be that this very wagon would
return loaded with western corn to
feed the horses to make the next crop.
Cotton seed was thenthought to be un-
fit for oxen. That was economy with a
vengeance, but we are doing very much
the same thing now.
The south is paying literally millions
of dollars for horses, mules, corn,
meat, hay and other products of other
sections, while the oil mills of the
south are burning million tons an
nually of the finest feed &c. S. hulls) for
want of purchasers at So to 81 ton,
and that here in the land of cheap coal
and wood.
Enough hulls burned, if fed to good
class of animals, to produce two
hundred million pounds Of beef, worth
Sc, 900; or, if mixed with little
more skill and made into butter, to
produce $12, 600, 900 worth If made to
take place of the hay, corn and oats
purchased abroad, the saving would be
enormous, probably $50, 900, 900 at the
prices prevailing the past year.-W. C.
Welborn, in Southern Farm.