CATTLE FOODS— NATURAL PRODUCTS 221 



cies which serve so useful a purpose as soiling crops for 

 summer feeding are also dried that they may be success- 

 fully stored for winter feeding, although mazei, and, to 

 some extent, other crops, are now preserved in a green con- 

 dition through the process of ensilage. (See Pars. 37-41.) 



305. Effect of drying fodders.— The advantages and 

 disadvantages of green as compared with dry fodders 

 have been much discussed. It is safe to assert that the 

 compounds of a dried fodder which has suffered no 

 fermentation are practically what they were in the 

 green, freshly cut material, excepting that nearly all of 

 the water contained in the green tissues has evaporated 

 and that in drying there is a possible loss of an imper- 

 ceptible amount of volatile compounds, whose presence 

 in the plant affects its flavor more or less. It is certain 

 that curing a plant generally diminishes its palatable- 

 ness and increases its toughness, or its resistance to 

 mastication, although with many crops, as for instance 

 the early cut native grasses, these changes do not affect 

 nutritive value to a material extent. There is no ques- 

 tion but that the mere matter of being green or being dry 

 has very little influence upon the energy value of a fodder 

 or upon the extent to which it will sustain growth or milk 

 formation. We must, however, take into accoimt the 

 desirability of the highest state of palatableness. 



306. Losses through curing fodders. — Drying fodders 

 under perfect conditions is not always possible. The 

 long-continued and slow curing of grass in cloudy weather, 

 especially when there is more or less rainfall, is accom- 

 panied by fermentations that result in a loss of dry sub- 

 stance more or less extensive, and which oxidize some of 

 the most valuable compounds, principally the sugars. 

 The tissues of certain plants, maize for instance, are so 



