Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1871 [PAGE 264]

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256 practical bearing. If I recollect right—and if I am not right I hope he will correct me—he commenced feeding young pigs with corn meal. I want to know what practical good we get from proving the fact, that animals from the very hour of their birth can be fed with corn meal. Supposing he had succeeded in that kind of experiment, what would the practical result be ? Dr. Miles—lam very unfortunate in being set up as a target here. In presenting a matter of this kind in a brief space, as we have to do, it is almost impossible to get in the details fully, and I have been misunderstood in every particular. Take the case that has been brought up by the gentleman from Missouri about feeding. "Would it be profitable for an Illinois farmer to build a hundred pens to put in steers for fattening ? I say no ; it would not pay. That is just the reason why we are here. If we could do that and make it pay, we would not need agricultural experiments all over the country. What I would do is this: Ascertain the value of the corn fed in different ways, so that the Illinois farmer may ascertain whether he is getting the full value of the feed. But these accurate experiments show he is not getting one-half of the value of the corn meal, or is not getting one-half of the return he should have had. And he will say I am not pursuing the best practice, and this high standard set up before me will be an incentive to a better practice. The gentleman says, I fed young pigs with corn meal from the start. 1 have not referred to these particular pigs that he has in view in this discussion. I have not had time to take up our experiments in detail. The facts are these : We have taken the young pigs and fed them milk until of suitable age to live on meal. But we have never made the sudden change from milk to meal. I put some a little sooner on the meal, with a view of ascertaining the result. The result was that in treatment, which I considered unfair, to get at the physiological fact, the oil seemed to ooze out through the skins, but that has not been so except in that case. The mixing of this with other statements has tended to produce false impressions. Mr. Murtfeldt—I did not mean to be unfair, but I wanted to put'the point I wished to make as strongly as I could. I wanted to have the experiment being tried to have a practical bearing. I did not mean, in speaking of the building of a hundred pens for as many steers, that the farmer should try the experiment, but after these gentlemen have established the fact that an animal in confinement will do better than if it has company, it is still impracticable to go on and carry out that idea. It is not a practicable fact.