Preparation of Feeding Stuffs. 239 



In every instance more of the nitrogenous substance was digested 

 from the uncooked than from the cooked food. These results are 

 substantiated by the investigations of others. 



374. The function of cooked food. A limited allowance of 

 steamed or cooked grain mingled with chaffed hay or roots is 

 helpful to horses because of favorable action on the digestive tract. 

 Growing pigs and breeding swine are often materially aided by a 

 reasonable allowance of boiled or steamed clover or alfalfa chaff, 

 roots or tubers to which meal has been added. Such food pos- 

 sesses considerable volume a desirable characteristic for feeds 

 designed for the class of stock mentioned. It is not conceded 

 that feeds are generally rendered more digestible by the action of 

 moist heat, but rather that their palatability has been increased 

 and the physical character of the compounds thus prepared 

 made such as to render them desirable for animals under cer- 

 tain conditions. As a general proposition it may be stated that 

 it does not pay to cook food for stock when such food will be satis- 

 factorily consumed without cooking, for cooking does not increase 

 the digestibility of feeding stuffs, but may lower it, and there is 

 considerable expense involved in the operation. 



375. Soaking feed. Corn often becomes hard and flinty a few 

 months after husking, and causes sore mouths with fattening 

 animals. So little of such feed is then eaten that gains may en- 

 tirely cease or the animals even fall back in weight. Grain which 

 is difficult of mastication should either be ground or soaked to 

 such degree of softness as will allow the animals to consume full 

 rations without difficulty. Soaking can hardly increase the digesti- 

 bility of feeds, though it may indirectly do so by permitting bet- 

 ter mastication and thereby more complete action of the digestive 

 fluids. (477, 537, 665, 758, 837) 



376. Chaff, or cut hay and straw. The practice of running hay 

 and straw through the feed cutter, or chaffing it, is almost uni- 

 versal in establishments where large numbers of horses are kept; 

 it is not common on ordinary stock farms. Moore 1 some years 

 since addressed letters to well-known agriculturists of England 

 asking for information on this topic. He ascertained that 70 per 



1 Jour. Roy. Agr. Soc., 1888. 



