132 The Feeding of Animals 



It should occasion no surprise that the mere wetting 

 of a food is without influence upon its solubility in the 

 digestive juices, because it becomes thoroughly mois- 

 tened during mastication and in the stomach. It is 

 not rational to expect that previous wetting would have 

 the slightest effect unless it induced more complete 

 mastication, which certainly would not be the case with 

 ground grains. The extensive trials by Kiihn and 

 others with a hay and bran ration, the bran being fed 

 in several conditions, such as dry, wet, moistened some 

 hours before feeding, treated with boiling water and 

 fermented, gave results adverse to all of the special 

 methods of preparation as either useless or harmful, 

 and no testimony so thorough and convincing has been 

 furnished on the other side. 



German and American experiments unite in con- 

 demning the cooking of foods already palatable, because 

 this .causes a marked depression of the digestibility of 

 the protein, with no compensating advantages. Diges- 

 tion trials with cooked or steamed hays, silage, lupine 

 seed, cornmeal and wheat bran, and roasted cotton 

 seed, uniformly show their protein to be notably less 

 digestible than that in the original materials, a fact 

 which may explain the lessened productive value of 

 cooked grains which has been observed in certain ex- 

 periments. It must be conceded, of course, that 

 when cooking feeding stuffs by steaming or otherwise 

 renders them more palatable, and thereby makes pos- 

 sible the consumption of material otherwise wasted, 

 the influence upon digestibility is a minor consid- 

 eration. 



