Show FALSE ECONOMY IN RATIONS FOR COWS it Is common practice among many man farmers who feed dairy cows cowa to feed liberally of ear corn or a plain mixture 1 of lot corn and coli cormeal meal and ground oats thinking that it if they feed enough of it there will be no necessity of buying so called expensive e protein feeds these practices are seldom given much attention until they come into the range of cow testing associations when such men do become members of some cow testing association it la is often difficult to induce them to decrease the total amount of grain fed and add a high protein feed to their present ration says gays a writer writa in the successful farming their froument Is usually that the feed will cost too much the following illustration was used by the writer quite recently to prove that such Is not the case A member of the jefferson county iowa cow testing association was feeding his cows a ration of pounds of corn and cormeal cob meal ineal and pounds of ground oats the average monthly production product lon of its his herd was pounds of milk and 24 pounds of butterfat ills ration was costing him per pounds to IS 18 cows lie he was feeding pounds of grain during the month at a cost of A A suggested ration of pounds of 0 corn and cormeal cob coli meal M ajo pounds of ground oats pounds of bran pounds of cottonseed meal and pounds of oll oil meal would cost him per pounds this ration Is considerably more expensive per pounds but at the rate its his cows were producing pounds of the su suggested ested ration would have been sufficient to keep up the c cows 0 w s p production rod u e t lo 10 n during d u ri n g that th t month li aas H however 0 v eve r 3 7 R 0 p pounds ou n d s were er suggested e d to allow for putting some of the cows cowa in a little better condition this D amount 0 un t 0 of f g grain r a 1 n would ui d c cost 0 st ga 3 9 lear voa U here e i Is s a E saving a v 1 n g of f 14 1449 4 9 fo for r t the h t I 1 month apart from this saving the fact should not be overlooked that the suggested ration contains more protein consequently an increase in production can reasonably be expected the owners ration contains only about 7 per cent protein which is altogether too little for large and economical production the suggested ration will contain tain about per cent protein the pasture which these cows were getting was not abundant and a little supplementary roughage would have improved conditions considerably another member was feeding along with fair pasture 15 pounds of ear corn to cows quite recently fresh at 60 cents per bus bai liel this feed would cost him tor for each cow per month ear corn Is not an economical feed at any time because of the quite large percentage that is ia not digested seven pounds of the same saine ration as was advised in the previous case would cost for each cow per month this would be a saving of 24 cents on each cow apparently this is only a small saving but the higher protein content of the suggested ration would no doubt bring a about b out an advance in production which would indirectly be a further saving it should be easy to see fica thes 9 illustrations that what appears to be a saving in refusing to feed high protein rations is simply false economy in many cases less pounds of grain in a balanced ration will bring more economical results than a liberal amount of feeds deficient in that absolutely necessary milk making food protein if the conditions in that first illustration had been the same for the entire year a saving of could have been effected and it costs only about 40 to be a member of a cow testing elation for a year |