NUTRITION OF FARM 

 ANIMALS 



CHAPTER I 



THE COMPONENTS OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS 

 i. DRY MATTER; ORGANIC MATTER; ASH 



1. Dry matter. The material composing the plant or 

 animal may be regarded as consisting of water and dry matter. 

 The two are ordinarily separated by maintaining the material 

 at or above the boiling point of water until it ceases to lose 

 weight. The loss in weight is regarded as consisting solely of 

 water, while the residue is, of course, the dry matter. , 



2. Water. Water is by no means to be regarded as an 

 accidental or incidental component of plants or animals. The 

 necessity for an adequate water supply to living beings is too 

 well known to require mention, while very little reflection is 

 needed to show that the water is as essential a part of the organ- 

 ism as any other ingredient. In the supporting tissues of the 

 plant or animal it has a mechanical function, lending elasticity 

 combined with strength. It acts as a solvent and carrier of 

 food materials and waste products and the osmotic pressures 

 of the solutes are an important factor in physiological processes. 

 Finally, its action in dissociating electrolytes appears to be 

 very intimately related to the chemistry of living matter. 



Water is usually abundantly supplied to live stock. The 

 study of animal nutrition, therefore, deals chiefly with the dry 

 matter, its supply and transformations, not because this is 

 fundamentally any more essential than the water but because 

 ordinarily it is economically more important. 



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