372 FEEDING ANIMALS. 



means the animal is compelled to chew his food ; he cannot 

 waste the straw or hay ; the chaff is too hard and too sharp 

 to be swallowed without sufficient mastication ; and, while 

 he is forced to grind that down, the oats and beans are 

 ground with it, and yield more nourishment ; the stomach 

 is more slowly filled, and, therefore, acts better on its con- 

 tents, and is not so likely to be overloaded. The increased 

 quantity of saliva thrown out in the lengthened maceration 

 of the food softens it and makes it fit for digestion." 



He recommends, however, that the oats and beans should 

 be ground and mixed with the chaff after slightly moisten- 

 ing it, so that the meal will not separate from it, but must 

 be masticated with the chaff. This practice is quite gener- 

 ally followed by the English farmers. This last method is 

 what they call manger feeding, and they give, as among 

 the advantages of this system, that horses can completely 

 masticate their food in a much shorter time, and leave so 

 much longer time for rest. 



The author has often urged the economy of this system 

 of cutting the fodder of the horse and mingling the ground 

 grain with it ; and this has become the basis of the system 

 in operation for feeding large numbers of horses on stage, 

 omnibus and railroad lines, both in this country and in 

 Europe. 



GERMAN EXPERIMENTS. 



Some recent experiments have been made, under the 

 direction of Dr. Wolff, at Hohenheim, to test the compara- 

 tive digestibility of foods by the horse and sheep ; and, 

 incidentally, they show the amount of food required by the 

 horse experimented upon. Unfortunately the experiments 

 were all made upon the same horse. The criticism to 

 which German experiments are most liable is that they are 

 generally tried on too limited a scale, and for too short 

 periods, to fully accomplish the purpose intended; and yet 

 these experiments have much interest on account of the 



