The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1892-11-30
Cotton Seed Hulls as Stock Food.

While cotton seed hulls are admitted
on all sides to be an excellentrough feed,
do not think they have yet been esti-
mated high enough in comparison with
hay or other provender.
Having fed large quantities for two
years, regard them being worth more
pound for pound than average bermuda
or other grass hay. I feed per day about
8 10 II pounds hulls, pounds wheat
bran and pounds cotton seed meal,
thoroughly mixed together. with very
satisfactory results. This ration is very
cheap, about 10 cents per day, and the
yield and quality Of milk highly satisfac.
tory. 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 abundant
grass in pasture, my hulls gave out. The
milk yield began to fall off so that in.
creased the bran and meal, but never did
I, during the whole spring, get as good
results as when used hulls: So I con.
slider hulls lied in connection with bran
and cotton seed meal) equal to tolerably
ample bermuda pasture as milk pro,
ducer.
Having found them such an excellent
food for cattle and knowing that cotton
seed meal is being fed to some extent to
horses, I reasoned that hulls ought also
10 be good for horses. So I procured
some corn meal, and by mixing only
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 increased
gradually until each animal consumed
about three pounds Of meal and consid-
ersble hulls.
The oil mills have started up again,
and I will commence right away to feed
hulls and meal to my horse stock. I
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 asI can.
It will very much lessen the expense of
horse feeding. Eight cents 8 day in bulls
aud meal will keep a thousand pound
work OK fat. 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? I am sure that
the horses and mules that work the cot.
ton fields of the South will eventually be
fed largely on cotton seed.
This writer can very well remember
(having been raised on cotton farm 80
miles from q railroad) when teams of
oxen would haul loads of cotton away
from the gin where hundreds of bushels
of seed were rottipg, and would have to
pull in addition, enough $3.50 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 then
thought to be unfit 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 tor horses and mules, corn,,
meat, hay and other products of other
sections, while the oil mills of the South
are burning million tons annually Of
the finest feed (c. 8. hulls) for want Of
purchasers at 81 to 81 q 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
millions pounds of beef, worth six million
dollars; or, if mixed with little more
skill and made into butter, to produce
twelve million dollars worth. If made to
take the place of the hay, corn and oats,
purchased abroad. the saving would be