DIGESTION EXPERIMENTS. 

 J. M. Bartlett. 



The digestibility of the following materials has been deter- 

 mined during the past year: 



Silage— Made of mature flint corn, sunflower heads and 

 horse beans. 



Silage — Made of mature flint corn, sunflowers (whole plant) 

 and horse beans. 



Silage — Made of Sanford corn, a large white flint variety. 



Hay, mostly timothy. 



Corn meal. 



Skimmed milk. 



The animals used were sheep (wethers), from five to seven 

 years old, of medium size and in good condition. No. I was 

 slightly larger and more vigorous than the other two and he also 

 had a better appetite, with perhaps stronger digestive powers, 

 which may account for his giving higher digestive coefficients 

 when heavily fed. No. 2, when fed a ration of hay alone, refused 

 to eat but a small quantity and it would seem that his dislike for 

 the food affected his digestion, as he gave a very low coefficient 

 for protein. They all stood the confinement well and as a rule 

 ate their rations up clean. 



The experiments were conducted on the plan which has been 

 followed in the past by the Station. The feeding periods were 

 twelve days each; the first seven days being used as preliminary 

 feeding, and the last five days for the experiment, during which 

 time the feces were collected and weighed. The rations were 

 uniform for each animal and weighed throughout the whole 

 feeding period. 



