The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1892-05-27
THE FARM AND HOME.
COB MEAL ABANDONED BY
WHOLE COMMUNITIES.
cobs Have Too Little Feeding value to
Pay for Grinding Transplanting
Trees Poultry Picking
and Home Hints.

John M. Stahl. who is a practical
farmer. as we'll as an able writer.
says: Il have fed cob meal--made
three trials of it--and have not been
able to get much feeding value from
It," Waldo +. Brown is an advo-
cate OF cob meal, but he admits that
ut one institute in Ohio he found but
few advocates for it in large audi
ence, and found many who considered
1t unfit to feed"
There was a cob-meal craze about
forty years ago. It broke out sud-
denly, like the email pox or measles
attracted a good deal Of attention at the
time. ; J the Country Gentleman,
ran it's course and died out In 1858
my father who owned grist:mill, at
the suggestion Of his miller and the
solicitation of his customers, built an
addition to his mill, put in an extra
water wheel. and procured the neces.
sary machinery for grinding corn and
cobs together. The expense was five
OF ak hundred dollars and for time
it seemed to be a profitable invest
ment He ground the corn for his
regular customers, and attracted Gus
tom from other mills to such an extent
that they too had to put in machinery
Tor grinding corn in the ear. The ad-
ditional toll charged for grinding corn
and cobs together was not much. the
mill was kept in good order. and the
meal was ground as fine as possible,
which lowing to the moisture in the
cob) was not always very fine and
the miller was honest; but gradually
the corn-cob custom fell of. and in
less than three years had ceased
entirely, and the spiders spun their
webs unmolested over the cob-mlll.
1t was the same with every mill in
this part of the country that put in
the improvement and l do not
know OF u single mill that now has the
machinery for grinding corn In the
ear.
What was the cause of such sur
prising downfall in the popularity of
cob meal and cob mills? First be-
cause farmers, having given the meal
fair trial, became fully convinced
that the actual value of cobs was so
little that it did not pay to have them
ground and that corn in the ear
could not be ground SO fine as the
shelled grain. Few farmers keep any
old corn over. Most of them com
mence feeding the new crop as soon
as it Is husked, and continue feeding
until spring and it is not possible to
grind corn and cobs as fine as they
should be ground at the season the
farmers want to feed the largest
amount. The cobs retain moisture
much longer than the grain. which
makes them grind hard. and if an at
tempt is rnado to grind fine. tho mill
stones will begin to rumble and
'grumble. gla over go slower and
slower, and unless they are raised and
allowed 10 grind coarse. will choke
up and stop. with full head of water
on the wheel. Then they must be
taken up and the glazing picked OF.
No class Of men We're ever more
happy than millcrs when the cob
era was over, and cob meal went
out OF fashion. There was no profit
in grinding it, and millers were
blamed for not grinding finer when
DlISy ulu GilC UcSG uHCy SOulu.
Let person take q cob and try
whiting it with a knife; he will find
that on each side of the cavities where
the kernels stood, extending to tho
pith it is full Of small thin circular
plates. hard as hemlock knot Let
him examine the dung Of animals fed
on the cob meal. and he will see these
hard, sharp plates have not digested.
and could not be digested by the stom-
ach of an ostrich and he will be apt
to have doubts whether such stubborn
substances could pass through the
long tortuous route of the intestines
without producing irritation. if not
laceration. Inflammation AMI .diarrhea.
My experience in feeding cob meal is
probably as great as that Of some OF
the directors at the experiment sta
tion. but not like theirs. favorable to
its use. Every animal to which it
was fed endeavored to separate the
cob meal from the kernal meal and
leave the former.
would not think Of putting my own
individual experience in opposition to
the learned men. were it not support
.ed by the testimony OF hundreds Of
Intelligent and observing farmersn
this country who years ago madah
fair trial OF cob meal and abandoned
its use. The experience of the many
is more likely to be right than the
experience OF the few.
If farmer has q hundred dollars
he does not know what to do with.
and does not want to give it TO the
foreign missionary society he might
put it into cob mill. 1t would al
ways stay there, and he would know
lust where it was.
WASHINGTON LETTER.
From Our Regular Correspondent.