CONDITIONS INFLUENCING DIGESTION 125 



Certainly, over-feeding may lessen the extent of solution 

 and is never wise, while under-feeding for the sake of 

 securing a maximum digestibility would not be good 

 practice. It is reasonable to suppose, however, that the 

 relation in quantity between the enzyms and the food 

 compounds has an influence, at least, upon the rapidity 

 of digestion; and indeed investigations by Stone very 

 strongly point to such a conclusion, for he found that the 

 rate of ferment action was proportional to the concentra- 

 tion of the ferment solution. 



183. Effect of drying fodders. At one time the belief 

 became very firmly fixed in the public mind that curing 

 a fodder causes a material decrease in its digestibility. 

 Because this drying is often carried on under conditions 

 that admit of destructive fermentations or of a loss of 

 the finer parts of the plant, this view is probably correct 

 for particular cases; but, if it is accomplished promptly 

 and in a way that precludes fermentation or loss of leaves, 

 it is doubtful if curing has any material effect upon 

 digestibility. 



The point has been the object of six American diges- 

 tion experiments, Hungarian grass, timothy, pasture grass, 

 corn fodder, crimson clover, and winter vetch being the 

 experimental foods. With four of these, slight but unim- 

 portant differences were observed in favor of the dried 

 material, while the reverse was decidedly true of the 

 crimson clover and the corn fodder. German experiments 

 show in a majority of cases greater digestibility for the 

 green fodders. It seems probable that in general prac- 

 tice, because of greater or less unavoidable fermentations 

 and a loss of the finer parts of the plant, dried fodders have 

 a somewhat lower rate of digestibility than the original 

 green material, a fact not due directly to drying, but to 



