_Wheat, a costly food._--It occasionally happens that the wheat harvest is so abundant, that many feeders give large quantities of this grain to their stock. Now, as Indian corn is at least 25 per cent. cheaper than wheat, even when the price of the latter is at its _minimum_, I believe that it is always more economical to sell the wheat raised on the farm, and to purchase with the proceeds of its sale an equivalent of Indian corn, which is a more fattening kind of food. _Bran_ is, with perhaps the exception of malt-dust, the most nutritious of the refuse portions of grains. It is usually given to horses, and owing to its high proportion of nitrogen, is, perhaps, better expended in the bodies of those hard-working animals, than in those of pigs and cows--animals that occasionally come in for a share of this valuable feeding-stuff. It should be borne in mind that bran commonly acts as a slight laxative, and that it is less digestible than flour, a large portion of it usually passing through the animal's body unchanged. This drawback to the use of bran may be obviated by either cooking or fermenting the article, or by combining it with beans or some other kind of binding food. AVERAGE ANALYSES OF GRAIN. --------------+-------+------+-----+--------+------+-----+--------+------ | | | | |Indian| | Rye |Buck- |Barley.| Bere.|Oats.|Oatmeal.| Corn.|Rice.|(Irish).|wheat. +-------+------+-----+--------+------+-----+--------+------ Water | 16·0 | 14·25| 14·0| 13·00 | 14·5 | 14·0| 16·0 | 14·19 Flesh-formers | 10·5 | 10·10| 11·5| 16·00 | 10·0 | 5·3| 9·0 | 8·58 Fat-formers | 67·0 | 64·60| 64·5| 68·00 | 69·0 | 78·5| 66·0 | 51·91 Woody fibre | 3·5 | 9·03| 7·0| 1·75 | 5·0 | 2·5| 8·0 | 23·12 Mineral matter| 3·0 | 2·02| 3·0| 1·25 | 1·5 | 0·7| 1·0 | 2·20 +-------+------+-----+--------+------+-----+--------+------ | 100·0 |100·00|100·0| 100·00 |100·0 |100·0| 100·0 |100·00 --------------+-------+------+-----+--------+------+-----+--------+------ _Barley_ is inferior in composition to wheat. As a feeding stuff, the English farmers assign to it a higher, and the Scotch farmers a lower, place than oats, which, perhaps, merely proves that in Scotland the oat thrives better than the barley, and in England the barley better than the oat. Barley-meal is extensively used by the English feeders, and with excellent results. Where _barley-dust_ can be obtained it is a far cheaper feeding stuff than the meal. Barley husks should never be given to animals unless in a cooked or fermented state.