The drought has made life on the farm tough, especially if you're raising dairy cattle. Corn is expensive and scarce after the long, hot summer, but luckily there's a substitute, and it's called candy! All this sugary stuff is bad for us, but good for cows (in moderation, of course). Reuters has the story:

In the mix are cookies, gummy worms, marshmallows, fruit loops, orange peels, even dried cranberries. Cattlemen are feeding virtually anything they can get their hands on that will replace the starchy sugar content traditionally delivered to the animals through corn.

"Everybody is looking for alternatives," said Ki Fanning, a nutritionist with Great Plains Livestock Consulting in Eagle, Nebraska. "It's kind of funny the first time you see it but it works well. The big advantage to that is you can turn something you normally throw away into something that can be consumed. The amazing thing about a ruminant, a cow, you can take those type of ingredients and turn them into food."

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Photo by Keven Law