ufacturer, the remainder being ground by means of a hammer mill in the 

 same feed mill. Field-cured hay was fed as the roughage. It was from a lot 

 that had been evaluated previously with the same heifers receiving it as the 

 sole ration. Each animal received 6.5-8 lbs. of corn or oats and 5-6 lbs. of 

 hay depending on animal size. It was possible, as in the previous texture 

 experiments, to make a comparison of the relative nutritive value of each 

 ration with each animal. The schedule of the experiments was as follows: 



Results and Discussion 



In ALL experiments a fairly liberal allowance of concentrates in pro- 

 portion to hay was fed to the experimental animals in order to bring out 

 differences in digestibility and utilization due to differences in the texture 

 of the concentrates. The level of feeding in each experiment was established 

 h\ the amount of feed eaten by the poorest feeder among the experimental 

 animals. In all cases the animals cleaned up their feed during the collection 

 periods. 



The average digestion coefficients and daily balances of protein and en- 

 ergy of the mixed feeds are shown in Tables 2 and 3. A statistical analysis of 

 the data from the 1951 experiment showed that the fine feed excelled the coarse 

 in every respect. In the 1952-53 experiment, with one exception, the fine 

 textured grain mixture excelled the coarse, the very coarse, and the pellets 

 in both digestibility and utilization of both the protein and the energy of 

 the rations. The one exception was that the fine mixture and the pellets gave 

 essentially the same energy balance. The coarse feeds and the pellets had es- 

 sentially the same nutritive value. When expressed in terms of digestible 

 protein and total digestible nutrients as shown in Tables 2 and 3, the fine 

 mixtures were still superior in nutritive value to the comparable coarse feeds. 



In the 1954 experiments on individual ingredients the animals did not 

 clean up the ground oats as readily as they did the crimped. The ground 

 oats seemed to lump when it came in contact with saliva, both in the animals'" 

 mouths and in that which drooled into the feed boxes. The ground corn, how- 

 ever, was cleaned up as readily as was the flaked corn. 



The average digestion coefficients of all the feed constituents of the 

 ground corn excelled the digestion coefficients of the flaked corn as seen in 

 Table 4. The differences were significant at better than the 5 percent level. 

 The ground corn excelled also in daily balance of protein and energy and 

 gave higher values for digestible protein and total digestible nutrients, but 

 these differences were not quite significant at the 5 percent level. 



In the case of the oats essentially the reverse was true. The nutritive 

 value of the crimped oats was generally superior to that of the ground oats. 

 With the exception of the digestion coefficients of protein and ether extract 



