Barley for Hay Feeding.
Should the barley for hog feeding be rolled, ground or fed whole, dry or wet? Also, how much should be fed and how often to get best results?
To obtain the best results, the barley should be ground into a meal (not too fine) and have the hulls screened or floated out. This is best fed when made into a thick slop. Some good feeders believe in letting it stand until fermentation sets up, that is, gets a little sour. We prefer a sweet to a sour feed. However, hogs will do well on either, provided there is no change from sour to sweet. The change is the bad part. Hogs should be fed just the amount that they will clean up well, and no more. A hog should always be ready for his feed at feeding time. We would not feed oftener than twice a day: night and morning. - Chas. Goodman.
Sugar Beets and Silage.
Will sugar beets keep in a silo and how sugar beets rank as a hog feed?
Sugar beets would probably keep all right if stored in a silo just as they might if kept in any other receptacle, but it is not necessary to store beets for stock-feeding in this State. They can be taken from the field, or from piles made under open sheds in which the beets may be put because more convenient for feeding than to take them from the field in the rainy season. Beets put whole into a silo would not make silage. For that purpose they would need to be reduced to a pulp, but there is no object in going to the expense of that operation where beets will keep so well in their natural condition and where there is no hard freezing to injure them. Beet pulp silage is made from beets which are put through a pulping process for the purpose of extraction of the sugar and, therefore, best pulp silage is only made in connection with beet-sugar factories and is a by-product thereof which is proving of large value for feeding purposes.
Feeding Value of Spelt.
What is the food value of spelt? It is a Russian variety of wheat, and yet, I am informed, it has about the same value as a stock food that barley has.
We have no analysis of spelt at hand. It is presumably like that of barley, as you suggest, because the spelt has an adhering chaff as barley has. This fact makes it better for feeding than wheat, not in nutritive content, but because the chaff tends to distribute the starchy material, making it more easily digestible; just as barley and oats are better than ordinary wheat for stock feeding.
Concentrates and Corn Stalks.