Advantages of Soiling. 59 



stomacli is used as a basket or receptacle into which 

 they store their food. When full they lie down, 

 and it is then that the feeding proper begins. 

 When a cow or sheep or other ruminating animals 

 are grazing, they are not, as many suppose, in the act 

 of eating. They are simply gathering or collecting 

 their food. The sooner they can do this collecting 

 the better, because they do not like to begin eating 

 until the basket is well filled. Besides, the less time 

 it takes to fill the basket, the more time they have 

 to eat and convert it into the desired product. 

 Again, if they must waste a lot of energy and mus- 

 cular force carrying themselves about, as they do 

 when- required to fill their baskets from a scanty 

 pasture, that wasted energy, which is all at the ex- 

 pense of food, as already shown, might better be 

 employed in producing milk or butter. After the 

 animals have filled this first paunch or basket, their 

 habit, as before stated, is to lie down, and then the 

 feeding properly begins by bringing up, from this 

 first stomach, a cud at a time, which they proceed to 

 masticate thoroughly, after which it is sent to the 

 second stomach, and so on to the third and fourth 

 stomachs, where it becomes digested and assimi- 

 lated with the blood until the basket is emptied, 

 when the cow is ready to collect it full again. 

 Looking at the cow as a machine it will be seen 

 that when she does not have to seek her food by 

 walking miles for it in the hot sun, annoyed by 

 the flies, etc., she is able to convert the largest 

 amount of feed into the product her owner requires 



