Preserving Green Forage 131 



only easily digested, but also helps digest other 

 richer foods, including grain ; and thus, adding 

 the natural juices of plants to the mixed ration, 

 aids nature to assimilate them without calling 

 upon the digestive economy of the animal to 

 do all the work. In the other cases, all this 

 matter is dried down into a hard condition, and 

 must have water to reabsorb it, freshen it up 

 and dissolve it, which requires a good deal of 

 extra force. If you take an apple, you will find 

 the nutriment all in a soluble condition ; and, 

 when you take it into the stomach, it is ready 

 to go into the circulation at once. If you dry 

 that apple, all that nutriment becomes like 

 rawhide, and it must be soaked up; and, when 

 you have done that, you have changed its con- 

 dition. You can never get it back in the same 

 condition it was before the drying was done, 

 and it takes more energy and force to digest 

 that dry food than in its green state. That is 

 the pith of the whole matter. 



The nutriment, or the sugar, in dry food is 

 not necessarily changed by the evaporation of 

 the water, but it is simply breaking the chemi- 

 cal union of the water with the rest of the com- 

 pound ; and that chemical reunion has got to 

 be restored by energies of the stomach, which 

 makes extra work and makes it slow. In feed- 



