Investigations with Swine. 



507 



was only wet with water, but generally it was soaked from 12 to 36 

 hours before it was fed. Many kinds were used corn meal, chopped 

 wheat, barley meal, whole wheat, whole barley, peas, etc. The aver- 

 age of all the trials at 8 stations shows the amount of feed required 

 for 100 Ibs. gain to be : 



Dry grain or meal required for 100 Ibs. of gain.. 444 Ibs. 



Wet or soaked grain or meal for 100 Ibs. of gain _ 434 Ibs. 



Amount of grain saved by soaking 10 Ibs. 



It is shown that 10 Ibs., or but 2 per ct., of the food was saved 

 in making 100 Ibs. of gain by wetting or soaking whole or ground 

 grain before it was fed. It is safe to hold that, if not unusually 

 dry and hard, such large grains as corn and peas are at best but 

 slightly improved by soaking, while all small, hard grains, such as 

 wheat and rye, are materially improved thereby. Any grain so 

 hard as to injure the mouths of animals during mastication should 

 always be ground or soaked. (339) 



825. Water in slop. Plumb and Van Norman of the Indiana Sta- 

 tion 1 fed 4 lots, each of four 60-lb. pigs, for 146 days, first on corn 

 meal and shorts, equal parts, and later on shorts and hominy feed. 

 Lot I was given dry feed, and the others increasing amounts of 

 water. All lots had water in separate troughs. 



Effect of varying amounts of water in the slop of pigs. 



The table shows that the lot fed dry meal did rather better than 

 the others, and that increasing amounts of water in the feed did not 

 affect the gains. At the Copenhagen (Denmark) Station 2 in several 

 trials with pigs getting skim milk or buttermilk along with grain, 

 adding 1 to 2 times their volume of water to the skim milk or but- 

 termilk had no effect on the gains produced. (87, 924) 



826. Light v. heavy feeding. In experiments at the Copenhagen 

 (Denmark) Station 3 with sixty 35-lb. pigs, the influence of the in- 

 tensity of feeding on gain was specially studied. One experiment 



Bui. 86. 



2 Ept. 10, 1887. 



3 Ept. 30, 1895. 



