THE SUGARS AND ALBUMINOIDS OF OAT STRAW. 



By S. H. COLLINS and B. THOMAS. 



Agricultural Department, Armstrong College, Newcastle-on-Tyne. 



The newer knowledge of nutrition shows that cereals and seed products 

 are deficient in calcium, sodium, chlorine, and unknown substances, called 

 fat-soluble A and water-soluble B sometimes referred to as "vitamines" 

 or "accessory food factors." 



McCollum(i) in America, has gone the length of proving by actual 

 experiment that cows and their calves can be raised to perfection on 

 nothing but the complete maize plant, although maize grain is well 

 known as a very incomplete food. In spite of his demonstration, and in 

 spite of the obvious fact that nothing could be more like grass than an 

 entire cereal plant and tlu^refore suited to herbivora, very few practical 

 or theoretical agriculturists recognise that straw is the most likely thing 

 in the world to correct for the deficiencies of grain feeding. The diffi- 

 culty is to get straw that is eatable. The practical fanner, when he 

 happens to get a good sample, accepts it as a gift of fate and is content 

 to turn it into profit for himself as soon as he can. The object of the 

 enquiry, or rather the series of enquiries of which this forms a part, is 

 to adopt the more scientific mode of procedure and endeavour to find 

 out what differences of feeding value naturally occur in oat straw, and 

 which of the conditions needed for high feeding value could be repeated 

 at will, and what light such investigation threw on the old question of 

 why farmers in some districts can fatten cattle on swedes and straw 

 whilst in other districts it is found impossible. Oat straw is plentiful in 

 this country and is probably well suppUed with the so-called food 

 accessories, that is the things that the grains lack; the problem at issue 

 is how to get more of the eatable kind and less of the uneatable kind. 

 Provided that the straw is eaten in fair quantity, the possible diminution 

 of growth power, by partial destruction of vitamines due to keeping 

 straw in the stack, is of no practical importance because of the large 

 amount of the straw. 



The first subject attacked was the sugar content, but it was found 

 during the progress of the investigations that the albuminoids were 



