[N'ew York Agricultural Experiment Station. 59 



cereal grain except buckwheat, the average percentage in thirty 

 samples of American oats being 9.5 per ct. 



In 26 cases out of 34 the fiber content of- these mixtures, as 

 shown above, is larger than that in average oats and in 16 in- 

 stances it ranges between 11.0 an^ 29.7 per ct. Moreover, a 

 majority of these feeds contain quite a proportion of com, or 

 perhaps hominy waste, material, which has a very low fiber con- 

 tent, averaging not over 2 per ct. It is clear that a mixture of 

 the entire grains of com and oats which does not carry less fiber 

 than the oats, is impossible, and inversely it is equally plain that 

 combinations of com and of oat offals witH as large and generally 

 much larger, percentage of fiber than is found in pure oats must 

 contain more oat hulls than belong with the oat kernels present, 

 That this is true of many of these feeding stuff mixtures is shown 

 by a mere mechanical examination without resorting to a chem- 

 ical analysis. Some of them must contain not less than 50 lbs. 

 of oat hulls per hundred pounds. The low proportion of protein 

 is also evidence of a convincing character. In 20 out of the 34 

 samples, the protein content is below what would ever be the case 

 with a mixture of whole corn and oats, a condition which is 

 brought about by the small proportion of protein in the oat hulls 

 present. 



In certain brands an amount of some highly nitrogenous feeding 

 stuff like cotton-seed meal or gluten meal is found, the object of 

 its use being to bring up the protein content to the standard of 

 wheat bran. This certainly improves the feed, but at the same 

 time the presence of high quality ingredients adds nothing to the 

 value of the inferior constituents. Grinding corn "\vitli oat hulls, 

 for instance, may not injure the com but it does not improve the 

 hulls. They are still hulls and retain all their characteristics as 

 a feeding stuff. 



In order to ascertain the effect upon digestibility of introducing 

 oat feed into a feeding stuff mixture, an experiment has been con- 

 ducted at this Station with sheep, using as the experimental feed- 



