130 The Feeding of Animals 



tinned rain, digestibility is decreased, and the same effect 

 is inevitable from the changes which occur in a ferment- 

 ing mass, such as a mow of wet haj% a pile of corn- 

 stalks or the contents of a silo. Experimental evidence 

 of the truth of these statements is not wanting. Ger- 

 man digestion trials with alfalfa and esparsette, green, 

 carefully dried, cured in the ordinary way, fermented 

 after partial drying and as silage, show a gradually 

 decreasing digestibility from the first condition to the 

 last. A single American experiment, comparing the 

 same fodder both green and as silage, gives testimony in 

 the same direction. On the other hand, field- cured corn 

 fodder, according to nine out of eleven American ex- 

 periments, is considerably less digestible than silage 

 coming from the same source. Here it is largely a 

 question of the relative loss by fermentation in the two 

 cases, and it is t.o be expected that the outcome would 

 not be wholly one way. 



INFLUENCE OF THE STAGE OF GROWTH OF THE PLANT 



Another generalization, which certainly must hold 

 good with reference to the digestibility of fodder plants, 

 is that any conditions of development which favor a 

 relatively large proportion of the more soluble carbo- 

 hydrates; viz., starches and sugars, and secure a min- 

 imum of gums and fiber, promote a high rate of diges- 

 tibility, and reverse conditions produce the opposite 

 result. It is well known that, in general, as the meadow 

 grasses mature the relative proportion of fiber increases 

 and the tissue becomes harder and more resisting. Nu- 



