The Meridian times. (Meridian, Idaho) 1909-1938, 1912-02-02

quite a different proposition, as the
dairy animal has no layer of fat like
the beef animal to keep her warm.
For this reason, good barns should
be supplied whatever dairy cows are
to be kept. A dairy animal does more
work than practically any other ami
NAL on the farm and one cannot af-
ford to have her food going to pro-
duce heat to keep her warm under
adverse conditions. A good, warm
comfortable stable should be sup
Piled The dairy cow is a factory
which uses a large amount of rough
feed, works it over, and gives milk
the concentrated product. If then,
the animal is supplied with good raw
products, large amount of milk can
be manufactured. Straw and poor hay
cannot make enough energy to much
more than keep up the body heat of
the animal, and of course there would
be no excess from which to make milk
Dairy cows should have a liberal al
towance of good alfalfa, and should
be fed in connection some grain and
roots. Ground barley, bran, or rolled
oats can be used to supply the grain.
The bran is a protein feed and does
not balance the alfalfa nearly as well
as the barley, yet it is liked by
the cows and is generally a part of
every dairy ration. 1t has been
found, however, that not more than
three pounds can be fed per day with
| alfalfa with any degree OF profit.
The dairymen at Richmond found
that they could bring in corn and
feed it with bran and alfalfa to a
profit. Carloads are purchased every
| yeaS and. good results seem to be OBJ
| tanned where the cost is not over
1920 per hundred. If some roots,
| such as mangels, could be added to
the dairy ration, it would help mater
| tally, as succulents of this kind are
needed by the dairy cows. Keep the
| dairy COW comfortable, give her all
that she can eat of good feed, and if
she is the right kind of animal, she
will return you a very good profit for
your trouble
In the raising of horses in the west,
we lose sight quite often of the fact
that colts if allowed to run down and
get in poor shape never make big
horses. Size sells on the market and
every hundred pounds over fourteen
hundred is generally worth about $25.
At $25 a hundred, horse flesh can be
produced by the farmer at a great
profit. Feed the colts well, giving
| the draft youngsters some grain, such
as oats or bran during the winter and
supplying them good pasture or range
| during the summer. If this is done,
you might just as well be selling 1000
and 100 pound horses at four years
old instead of marketing the 1,400
pound kind. In feeding your work
horses, too much alfalfa is generally
fed, for it is very platable, and the
horses learn to gorge themselves on
it. About one and a fourth pounds
of hay and three-fourths to one pound
of grain for every hundred pounds
live weight of your horse will be
practically all that is needed. In
some sections alfalfa is not liked as
horse feed, yet in practically all ex-
periments it has been proven supe-
rior, pound for pound, to timothy
when fed to work horses. Oats is
the ideal grain for horses, but bran
can be fed to advantage, and where
bran is cheaper than oats, one-half
of the grain ration can be sup
piled by this. Feed most of your hay
at night, so that the bulky food will
be digested before the horse goes to
work. Give some hay in the mornings
and but very little at noon.
Feeding lambs is going to be a
profitable business in the west, and
alfalfa hay makes very good rough
age for them. Along with this, wheat
oats or barley make very profitable
feeds. In experiments conducted at
the Utah Experiment Station, lambs
made the most profitable gains when
half-rations of grain were given,
that ssls,---only about half as
much grain is fed as the
feeds of the east would use.
With lambs weighing sixty pounds,
about a third of a pound of grain a
day seems to give very good results.
One advantage in sheep feeding is
that the grains do not have to be
ground, and the animals need but
very little housing.
The hog business is one which the
west is taking up to great extent and
one which is going to yield big profits
to most of the farmers, Feeding is
the biggest proposition with hogs, as
the housing does not cost very much.
Keep the pigs growing by feeding
such grains as ground barley or
wheat or shorts. These fed with
skim-milk, alfalfa and some roots
will produce pork at very low price
and will allow the farmer a very nice
profit on his investment. Pork can
be produced at from to cents al
pound, and if the selling price is as
Studies in PomoIosy.