46 FEEDS AND FEEDING, ABKIDGED 



a small allowance of moistened chaffed hay. A cow yielding a large 

 flow of milk is a hard-worked animal, and her grain should usually 

 be ground. Where pigs follow fattening cattle to gather up any 

 grain which escapes mastication and digestion there is no advantage 

 in grinding corn or even shelling it, except perhaps toward the close 

 of the feeding period when the cattle may be induced to eat more by 

 grinding. Where no pigs run with cattle, it is usually economical to 

 grind or crush the corn before feeding. Except in the case of small 

 or hard seeds, sheep with good teeth should grind their own grain. 

 While it pays to grind the small grains for pigs, there is no appreciable 

 advantage in grinding corn for pigs weighing 150 lbs. or less. For 

 older animals such preparation may sometimes be profitable. 



Cutting or chaffing forage. — Passing such coarse forages as corn 

 or the sorghums thru a feed cutter or shredder is usually profitable, 

 not because the portions consumed are digested more completely but 

 because the animals waste less of the feed and the cut forage is more 

 convenient to handle. Where hay is palatable and consumed with 

 little waste, it is ordinarily not economical to cut or chaff it for cattle 

 or sheep, unless it is desired to mix the good-quality hay with other 

 less palatable feed so that the whole will be consumed. Such prepara- 

 tion will often pay with poor roughage, as the animals will then con- 

 sume it with less waste. In establishments where many horses are kept, 

 the hay is often cut. Not only is less wasted then, but the concen- 

 trates may be mixed with a part of the cut hay, forcing the horses to 

 eat them more slowly. Roughage should not be cut so fine that the 

 animals will swallow it without chewing, or, in the case of ruminants, 

 that it will escape rumination. 



Soaking feed. — When grain with hard or small kernels can not be 

 conveniently ground or crushed, it should be softened by soaking 

 before feeding, care being taken that the meal does not become stale 

 by long standing. 



Cooking feed. — Only 60 years ago scientists believed that cooking 

 feed greatly increased its value for stock. Numerous careful trials 

 have since shown that, in general, cooking either grain or roughage 

 does not increase its digestibility or nutritive value, and may even 

 decrease the digestibility of the protein. While cooking feed for 

 cattle was abandoned years ago, it is still practiced to some extent 

 for swine. Fortunately, this question has also been settled by nu- 

 merous tests at several experiment stations. These showed conclu- 

 sively that, rather than there being a gain, there was in most cases an 

 actual loss from cooking. The only exceptions are a few feeds, such 

 as potatoes and field beans, which can be successfully fed to pigs 

 only after being cooked. When such small and hard grains as wheat 



