CUTTING AND COOKING FOOD. 337 



The article is entitled, " Cutting and Cooking Food for Ani- 

 mals: By E. W. Stewart, North Evans, Erie Co., N. Y.:" 



■WHY FODDER SHOULD BE CUT. 



"The object of mastication of food is to comminute it, to break 

 down its structure, and to render it more easily acted upon by 

 the gastric juice, thus enabling the animal to appropriate its 

 nutriment. Now, the more finely divided, food is, when sub- 

 jected to the gastric juice, the more rapidly and easily it is 

 digested. For when finely divided it presents many hundred 

 times more surface to the action of the digesting fluid. This 

 is simply represented in cooking fine meal or whole grain. "We 

 know it takes but a few minutes to cook the meal, while hours 

 are required to soften the whole grain. 



"When cattle eat succulent food, the fibre is easily broken 

 and reduced to a pulpy mass ; but not so with dry, woody fibre, 

 which must be broken and comminuted before the food contained 

 in it is accessible for animal nutrition. This the animal seldom 

 does, and more especially the non-ruminating; therefore, it 

 becomes highly necessary that we should use machinery to assist 

 the animal, as much as possible, in extracting the nutriment con- 

 tained in dry food. And if it be profitable to cut hay, straw 

 and other coarse fodder, for the purpose of breaking the fibre, 

 and rendering it more easy of mastication and digestion by the 

 animal, then it is well to cut or divide it as finely as is consist- 

 ent with economy. There is no danger of inventing machinery 

 which will cut or pulverize it too finely. The great want now 

 is, a machine, cheap and durable, which shall reduce woody fibre 

 to pulp. This will require a machine which shall bruise as well 

 as cut, so as to leave the whole fibre thoroughly mashed and 

 divided. It wiU not be liable to the objection urged, that it will 

 leave nothing for the animal to do; for this dry fibre, when 

 reduced to the greatest degree practicable, will still require more 

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