Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 August 1891 — LIVE STOCK. [ARTICLE]

LIVE STOCK.

Feeding Horses. With horses, more than any other class of stock, it pays to cut and grind the feed. Ground grain is the cheapest form in which nutriment can be given to the working teams. In order to secure the best results in feeding ground feed it will be quite an item to mix with cut hay, straw, or fodder. To feed cornmeal alone there is always a risk that it will compact in the stomach and prove more or less indigestible. Mixed with, some kind of rough cut feed makes It more porous and less liable to do this. Overfeeding will impair the digestion, and is really more injurious than not feeding enough. Horses require less bulky food than other classes of stock. During the winter they heed some grain. If the corn and oats can be ground together and a small quantity of oil meal be added, and then the hay or fodder be cut and all mixed together, a good ration can be made up that will be healthy and nutritious. Oats abound in nitrogenous, or muscleforming materials, and for this reason can always be fed to work teams and growing colts to advantage. Sheaf oats run through a cutting box, and a small quantity of bran and oil meal, make one of the cheapest and best foods that can be supplied to horses. They ought never to be fed more than they will eat np clean at each meal, and will thrive better If they are given a good variety. Grinding the feed lessens the waste and gives better opportunity of making up •MigMe rations than when everything

is fed whole. A good ration of the right kind of food will give much more satisfactory results than an over feed of other materials. It is not necessary that stock should have roughness before them all the time. And by cutting and mixing with the ground grain a good ration can be made up that will lessen the waste, and also the cost Horses should be kept in good condition, not necessarily fat but thrifty, but at the same time it is desirable to do this as economically as pqpslble, whether the animals are kept for work, growth, or breeding. It does not pay tq lessen the expense of keeping by allowing them to run down in condition. Cattle Bopas LI a in Stood Cattle. More. plainly and still more plainly from week to week is demonstrated the fact that the great runs of cattle in the West and elsewhere are pressing more hardly upon every branch of the cattle business than the ripening of choice beeves. The men who are putting firstclass cattle on the markets, while not receiving the prices of a few months ago, are getting so near them that they feel to only a limited extent the pressure of the heavy runs. It has always been a point urged by The Stockman that beef production if it paid at all must pay best and almost only where conducted with an eye to supplying the demand for the highest quality of meats. We hope that progressive beef-makers when they read those columns will take this oft-repeated lesson to heart, and decide either to be In competition with the best or to do something else. We see no special hope in the future for the pro-

ducer of inferior beef, while the man who puts his brain into studying the matter of furnishing prime beef to firstclass markets is as much as almost any other agricultural producer likely to be paid for what he does.— National Stockman.