Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 November 1894 — FEEDING WHEAT. [ARTICLE]

FEEDING WHEAT.

The question of feeding wheat is a lew one. With a former relatively ligher price than corn or oats it was lot thought of as a feed. Now the jonditions have changed. In our eading local markets one hundred pounds of wheat is worth fifty-five jents; one hundred pounds of corn is worth eighty cents, and one hundred pounds of oats is worth ninety cents, with an almost certain advance in lorn and oats. Knowing that the nutritive ratio if feeds for growth should be 1 to i-4, that is, 1 part nitrogen to 5.4 jarbonaceous, of which red clover, 1 to 5.7, is a good example, we can ’eadily see that wheat, which is 1 to i.B, is a good feed for growth. For ’attening purposes we need more of the carbonaneous, and the ratio of lats is Ito 6.1, and corn 1 to 8.6. Mow the average farmer is like mytelf, he don’t know much about nitrogen or carbon, but by experience be learns that certain foods are best to feed for milk, like clover with various kinds of oil cake, which are half, or nearly so, nitrogenous, while for fat, corn is the standard, there being others with a higher rate of larbon, but not in such a condensed state. So he knows that certain foods are hard to digest, and there s great waste unless they are ground >r softened. Now, with wheat at a nuch lower price relatively than lorn, he can readily see that it will lay to feed wheat if all other conditions are right. But he learns by sxpcrience that our hard wheat is lot easily digested, and that grind,ng should be done if practicable. At my hand lies Professor Henry’s lulletin, in which he says it must be rround. Well, that is all very well or the Professor and many of his leaders, but how about the farmer with no grinding machinery on the arm, and twenty-five miles to the learest mill? In this newest of new lountries we could readily count twelve steam threshers at work in a radius of that many miles. Every farmer has frem 250 to 1,500 bushils, and the miller gives but twentyfix pounds of flour for sixty pounds if wheat, and no addition of bran. There would have to be much waste tn feeding if it would pay to patronize the miller, though of course he would give more pounds of chop. Now we soak our wheat one day for uir horses, giving fair averagefizeil ones three quarts of soaked ?rain at a feed, and they have done equally as well as with the usual Amount of corn or oats.