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Show - Making Beef Without Hogs. If cholera attacks the hog and wipes him out, about twenty-five per cent of Guf high-priced corn is wasted except from a fertility standpoint. This is a question which every farmer should study carefully. How can he make beef without the hog to consume the waste feed? Not that we have any objections to the hog, for he certainly is the farmer's best friend, but we must bey prepared for emergencies. We must feed cattle oftentimes when we have no hogs. We must study more carefully the process of digestion diges-tion of feedstuffs. When we see from twenty to thirty per cent of the corn which a steer is made to consume passing through the digestive system It is a sure indication that there Is something wrong. We are either feeding feed-ing the animal more than it can assimilate as-similate or its digestive system is out of condition. In most instances the trouble is due to a deranged digestive system caused by overfeeding. This leads up to another point which Is the mixing of grain and roughage, together to-gether which is, in our estimation, the ideal way of feeding cattle. When grain is fed separately from the roughage it is greedily swallowed and passes into the third and fourth stomachs of the animal, thus escaping escap-ing mastication and the action of the saliva of the mouth which has the power of converting starch into sugar which is digestible. By mixing the grain with the roughage it will be re-masticated, re-masticated, thus much more thoroughly thorough-ly digested than when each are fed separately. This method of feeding Involves the cutting of roughage, a step which most farmers are not prepared pre-pared to take as yet, but one which they can well afford to be thinking about as in the near future it will be practiced by the most successful cattle cat-tle feeders. Another question which is worthy of our attention is the silo. The silo, while a new thing in Iowa, is by no means an experiment. It has been thoroughly tested in the eastern states and Canada, and when once tried it speaks for itself. It is now considered to be indispensible on the dairy farm, and while it has not been, as yet, very generally used in the production pro-duction of beef, the results as reported report-ed to date are most encouraging. The tVo is by all odds the cheapest medium me-dium through which we can obtain succulent feed for our stock during the winter months. In recapitulation I may say that the successful farmer of the future will be the man who combines the production pro-duction of first-class live stock with his farming operations, who keeps beef cows for the double purpose of producing butter and calves intended for the block,- who gets nearly as many pounds of gain from sixteen pounds of corn as the average feeder of to-day gets - from twenty-five pounds when fed to cattle. Who combines com-bines his grain with the roughage fed to his animals thereby securing more complete digestion of the same, and who stores his cornstalks in the silo that they may be converted Into beef and dairy products instead of being burned in the fields. W. J. Kennedy. ; Prizes for Oxfords. The American Oxford Down Record Association will offer $60.00 in special prizes at each state and provincial fair in 1903, provided the Oxford breed is allowed a separate class. The money mon-ey to be divided a3 follows: All stock competing for these prizes must be good specimens of the breed or no prizes will be awarded; must be bred and owned by the exhibitor in the state or province where competing, registered In the American Oxford Down Record, bear the A. O. D. R. A. ear tag and certificate of registry under seal of the association, presented present-ed at time of exhibition. Where there is but one exhibitor, but one prize will be paid. One hundred and seventy-five dollars will also be offered by this association in special prizes to Oxford Down Sheep at the International Interna-tional Live Stock Exposition, Chicago, December, 1903, and $75.00 will be offered at the Ontario Provincial Winter Win-ter Fair, Guelph, Ont, December, 1903. For further information address, W. A, Shafor, Secretary, Hamilton, Ohio. Night Yarding Cows. From Farmers' Review' It is getting get-ting to be a common practice in this vicinity to yard the cows at night. For my eight, -l have about an acre to yard in. One of my neighbors has a lot of about two acres for twenty cows. There should be access to water. We find yarding cows more profitable than letting them run in the pasture. And cows under this treatment give a more regular amount of milk, than when permitted to run out, as they seem less excited. H. Betts, Lorain county, Ohio. |