AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 51 



kind or quantity, was simply mixed by chopping the hay, moist- 

 ening it and sprinkling the grain upon it. After April 24th, the 

 animals were returned to the same ration that they had eaten 

 previous to March 5tb. Now how did these changes affect pro- 

 duction? There is no evidence that they had any affect. The 

 amount of food given, it is seen, remained practically unchanged 

 and it does not appear that the method of preparation had any 

 influence either upon the yield or composition of the milk. It is 

 noticed that the yield is given for thirty days previous to March 

 5th, and for thirty days following April 24th. The time during 

 which the chopped and moistened ration was fed between those 

 dates was fifty-one days. During all this time there appears to 

 have been very little change in the composition of the milk, as is 

 shown by analyses made in February, March and April. There 

 was a steady decrease in the daily yield of each animal, which 

 seems to have been quite uniform throughout the entire time, 

 from the first of February to the last of May. The daily weights 

 of each mess of milk, although not recorded above, show that in 

 changing from the dry food to the moistened or from the moist- 

 ened to the dry, there was no deviation in the daily production, 

 but that the animals behaved in every respect as though they 

 were receiving the same amount of nutrition in the same form, 

 which was really the case. The simple fact seems to be, that 

 when animals are receiving palatable food that is adapted to their 

 needs these minor differences in the method of treating the ration 

 have very little influence. Of course it must be conceded that if 

 steaming or chopping and wetting a coarse fodder renders 

 palatable that which would otherwise be unpalatable and 

 therefore useless as a cattle food, a saving is thereby 

 made. It is, then, only a question as to whether the material 

 thus utilized is of greater value than the cost of preparing it. 

 But there is very little evidence that steaming, chopping, wetting 

 or otherwise treating cattle foods that are palatable without any 

 treatment, and of which the animals will eat a sufficient quantit} 7 

 in their natural condition, is good economy. 



