218 Feeds and Feeding. 



suits can only be explained on the theory that the cooking was an in- 

 jurious process so far as its use for food for fattening animals is 

 concerned. ' ' 



Brown of the Ontario Agricultural College/ reviewing several 

 trials with cooked and uncooked peas and corn, wrote : " I am not at 

 present prepared to say definitely what other kinds of food may do, 

 raw or cooked, with pigs or other domestic animals, or how the other 

 animals will thrive with peas or corn, raw or boiled, but I now assert 

 on the strongest possible grounds . . . that for fast and cheap pro- 

 duction of pork, raw peas are 50 per ct. better than cooked peas or 

 Indian corn in any shape." 



At the Wisconsin Station- the author, starting with the belief that 

 cooking must increase the value of the common feeds for swine, after 

 some 15 trials with cooked and uncooked whole corn, com meal, 

 ground barley, and wheat middlings, was forced to the conclusion that 

 the Maine findings were correct. (823) 



338. Concerning cooked feed. — No one can review the large accu- 

 mulation of data from the experiment stations without being con- 

 vinced that generally it does not pay to cook feed for stock. How- 

 ever, some feeds, the potato and field bean of the North, for example, 

 can be successfully fed to swine only after being cooked. Unless 

 first thoroughly softened by cooking or soaking, such small hard 

 grains as rice, wheat, and rye cannot be advantageously fed except 

 to sheep. Musty hay and com fodder are rendered more palatable 

 and safe by steaming. 



An occasional allowance of steamed or cooked barley, bran, etc., 

 is especially helpful to horses because of its favorable action on the 

 bowels, and is doubtless true in lesser degree with fattening cattle. 

 In winter, breeding swine and stock hogs are benefited by a daily 

 feed of steamed roots, tubers, clover or alfalfa chaff, etc., with meal 

 added. It is safe to say that it does not generally pay to cook feed 

 for farm stock when such feed will be satisfactorily consumed with- 

 out cooking. It is often advantageous to administer warm feed in 

 winter, especially to swine, but warming should not be confused with 

 cooking feed. (823) 



339. Soaking feed. — Corn becomes hard and flinty a few months 

 after husking, and sometimes causes sore mouths, so little being then 

 eaten that gains may cease or the animals lose in weight. Grain 

 which is difficult of mastication should be either ground or softened 

 by soaking, so that the animals may at all times consume full rations. 



' Ept. 1876. ' Rpt. 1893. 



