DIGESTION EXPERIMENTS WITH SHEEP AND STEERS. 203 



cent for the dry matter. This seems to indicate one of two 

 things, that the coefficients for the sheep on the hay are too 

 low, or the addition of the grain to the ration materially increased 

 their capacity to digest the hay. It is quite probable that this 

 latter explanation is the correct one, as other experiments show 

 they have no greater capacity to digest cottonseed meal than the 

 steers. The experiment with the hay was carefully made, the 

 results of the two sheep agree closely and there is no reason to 

 distrust the figures. The hay was rather poor quality, very low 

 in protein and not as well relished by the sheep as the steers. 

 In experiment No. 1 19 the sheep gave coefficients for dry matter 

 only about 1 per cent higher on a somewhat better timothy hay 

 and were still 6 per cent below the steers. 



In the experiment with corn fodder (which the sheep did not 

 relish) the steers gave coefficients nearly 10 per cent higher on 

 the dry matter than the sheep ; but in the experiment with corn 

 silage, which was well relished by both lots of animals, the 

 coefficients agree more closely. 



In the third season, when the experiments were made only 

 with the steers, there are some results obtained on the digesti- 

 bility of gluten feed and corn meal which are of special interest. 

 (See table on page 199.) In experiment No. 115 a ration of 10 

 pounds of hay to 6 pounds of corn meal was fed. And in experi- 

 ment No. 116 10 pounds of hay to 6 pounds of gluten feed was 

 given. In the mixture with corn meal 68.9 per cent of the dry 

 matter was digested and only 51.9 per cent of the protein, but in 

 the ration where the corn meal was replaced by the gluten feed, 

 70.9 percent of the dry matter was digested and 74.5 per cent of 

 the protein — a difference of 2 per cent of the dry matter and over 

 22 per cent for the protein. Calculating the digestibility of the 

 corn meal and gluten alone, the dry matter of the corn meal is 

 84.3, the gluten 87.6, while the protein of the corn meal is 56.4 

 per cent and the gluten feed 86.6 per cent — a difference in dry 

 matter of about 3 per cent and protein about 30 per cent. When 

 the protein of these two rations is from the same source, corn, 

 it seems very improbable that such a difference in digestibility 

 exists, and the very low figures obtained for the corn meal are 

 due to metabolic products in the feces, which offset the coefficient 

 much more when a ration very low in protein is fed, than when 



