The Old Time Farm Magazines: Feeding Poultry, Finishing Steers and Making Preserves

Enlarge Image Image Gallery These old time farm magazines give advice on a different type of feed for poultry. PHOTO: FOTOLIA/ANDREAS KARELIAS

This page contains excerpts from issues of THE COUNTRY GENTLEMAN dated 1915. 

Feeding Poultry Potatoes

When properly handled potatoes make an excellent feed for poultry. They may be fed after being thoroughly cooked, but should never be given raw. If given in a mash of ground grains the proportion should not exceed fifteen or twenty per cent of the complete mixture. As the cooked product is quite similar to corn meal in feeding value, such feeds as bran, middlings, ground oats and meat feeds should be fed in connection with them. After young chicks are weaned they may be given cooked potatoes in the same proportion as has been suggested for the mature fowls.

An Economical Barn

Time was when barn-building materials could be had for the cutting or the hauling. But the present increasingly high prices of lumber have forced barn builders to economize wherever it is possible within the limits of safety.

The plank frame barn design shown herewith makes every stick of lumber do its share of the work. (Click on the "Image Gallery" to view the barn design.)  The Iowa Experiment Station is striving to help Iowa farmers not only to solve their problems about livestock and field crops, but to build better barns at the lowest possible cost and to plan them for the greatest efficiency.

This barn-framing plan has met great favor among barn builders. There are no heavy and long timbers in its design. The rafters are of two-by-six-inch material and the wall studding is of the same size. The joists are two-by-twelves, supported by heavy built-up girders at the center. The roof arches, the wall studding and the joists are all securely tied together and well braced to overcome every possible pressure. The rafters, studding and joists are all placed two feet center to center throughout the length of the barn.

In Iowa a number of barns of this type have been constructed. An estimate shows that they cost about a dollar a square foot of floor space.

Feed for Finishing Steers

Is any one of the following combinations a sufficient ration for fattening beef: First, corn and soy beans and shredded corn fodder; second, corn and cow peas and shredded corn fodder; third, corn and a mixture of soy beans and cowpeas and shredded corn fodder? — B. P., Ohio.

Any one of the rations listed might be sufficient to finish steers, but whether the gains would be profitable or not is a different question. If used, the corn and beans or peas should be fed in the proportions of about four to one. The absence of any succulent material in the feeds is serious, while the presence of corn and corn fodder in any considerable amount argues the need for a silo on the farm.