Interpreting the Results of Group Feeding Experiments

Why should it be necessary to interpret the results of feeding experiments at all? Why not just publish them as they are? Isn't any interpretation necessarily theoretical and unsafe and unscientific? Perhaps the answers to these questions will come more convincingly if we keep in mind that our farmers and stockmen really ask us to predict what will happen in their feedlots, rather than to tell them what did happen in ours. Of course most of them are too wise to expect us to predict exactly what will happen—they know we can't do that—but they do want us to tell them as closely as we can what procedure will be most likely to secure them the results they want. Feeding Trials to Be of Value Must Be Interpreted When a farmer asks us how hulled oats compare with shelled corn as a feed for fattening pigs, he has really asked us what will happen if he feeds hulled oats compared with what will happen if he feeds shelled corn.