fatty matter adone, but include more or less wax, resinous substances, 

 etc., which are largely soluble in ether, and of a similar highly carbon- 

 aceous character. The fat of the fodder seems to serve, in case of 

 judicious fodder rations, mainly to increase the stock of fat in the 

 animal which consumes the fodder. 



Wherever the article has been tested by actual feeding experiment 

 under skillful observation, the amount of each essential grou}) of food 

 constituents, which has been shown to be digestible, is reported in 

 connection with the chemical analysis, under the heading — Digestible 

 Portion — per hundred weight or per ton. The higher or loiver degree 

 of digestibility of a fodder article exerts a decided influence on its 

 nutritive value. Different stages of growth affect the rates of digest- 

 ibility of the various plant constituents. The same feature is noticed 

 in regard to different parts of plants, as well as in case of different 

 kinds of animals. 



More than two hundred fodder articles have thus far been studied 

 under varying circumstances, and most of our current kinds of fodders 

 have been tested, in Europe and elsewhere, in numerous well conducted 

 feeding experiments with a suitable selection of different kinds of 

 farm live stock. This fact imparts to many of the results recorded 

 a sufficient importance to recommend them as a basis of new feeding 

 trials, with feed stuffs raised in our climate or obtained in our home 

 industries. 



The last but not least important column of the statement of the 

 chemical analysis — quite frequently found in the general record of a 

 fodder for a practical agricultural purpose — is that of '■^Nutritive 

 Ratio." These words are used to express the numerical relation of 

 its digestible nitrogenous substances — taken as one, as compared with the 

 sum ot its digestible no7i-nitrogenous orgariic constituents, fat mcluded. 

 The information derived from that statement is very important ; for it 

 means to express the summary of results secured by actual feeding 

 trials under specified conditions, and with the aid of the best indorsed 

 chemical modes to account for the constituents of the food before and 

 after it has served for the support of the animal on trial. 



Experience has shown that different kinds of animals, as well as 

 the same kind at different ages and for different functions, require a 

 different proportion of the essential groups of food constituents to 

 produce in each case the best results. A statement of the nutritive 

 ratio of a fodder article, — otherwise well adapted as an ingredient of 

 a dail}- diet in the case under consideration, — indicates the direction 

 in which the material has to be supplemented to economize its several 

 constituents to a full extent. 



Practical trials with milch cows have demonstrated that they require 

 'for the highest production of a good milk and the maintenance of a 

 healthy live weight, the most nutritious food we are in the habit of 

 giving to full-grovvn farm animals. Careful examinations into the 

 composition of an efficient diet for milch cows have shown that it con- 

 tains one "^art of digestible nitrogenous matter to fxovafive to five and a 



