160 FEEDING ANIMALS. 



who have fed rye-straw know that neither horses, cattle nor 

 sheep manifest any anxiety to eat it. Its fibre is exceed- 

 ingly tough, making better paper than any other straw; 

 and this is undoubtedly the best use to make of it, when 

 there is a demand at paper-mills. Yet Pennsylvania farm- 

 ers of the olden type, who were wont to have sleek, well- 

 rounded team-horses, kept them largely upon the grain of 

 rye, ground into meal and fed upon chopped rye-straw. It 

 certainly would furnish an excellent divisor to separate the 

 meal and carry it in a loose, porous condition into the 

 stomach, giving the gastric juice an easy circulation and 

 full effect in digestion. The feeders of large numbers of 

 street-railroad horses, in New York City, for a similar 

 reason, select ripe timothy hay, alleging that it keeps the 

 animals in better health when fed largely upon grain. 



Wheat-straw and barley-straw, contained in the tables, 

 have a composition, chemically, the former very similar to 

 that of rye-straw but the fibre is less tough, and conse- 

 quently a larger percentage of albuminoids and carbo- 

 hydrates is digestible whilst barley- straw is quite equal to 

 oat-straw, and may be fed to good advantage in connection 

 with grain. 



In order that the reader may make an easy comparison 

 between some of the most common kinds of food for cattle, 

 we will give the chemical composition, digestibility, 

 and money-value, according to the German standard, for 

 .2,000 Ibs. or an American ton of clover-hay, meadow- 

 hay, corn-fodder, oat-straw, oil-cake, wheat-bran, corn-meal 

 and oats. These foods are used more in the United States 

 than any like number of others. They are also comple- 

 mentary to each other: 



