MANUAL OF 0ATTL"E-F3EEDING. 



251 



Here it is evident that witli increasing indigestibility of 

 the crude fibre the amount of digestible non-nitrogenous 

 matters falls more and more below the quantity of nitro- 

 gen-free extract, while only in the first case are the two 

 approxximately equal. 



Other investigators have confirmed this result, and it 

 has also been shown that the decrease in the digestibility 

 of the total non-nitrogenous matter is, at least in some 

 cases, less rapid than that in the digestibility of the crude 

 fibre. 



The younger and more tender a fodder is, the smaller 

 is generally its percentage of crude fibre, and the greater 

 is the digestibility of the latter. As a consequence, the 

 whole amount of non-nitrogenous matters digested fn>m 

 such a fodder is generally larger, in comparison with the 

 quantity of nitrogen-free extract, than is the case with one 

 cut at a more advanced period of growth. 



As an example of this may be mentioned some experi- 

 ments on sheep made by Wolff, at Hohenheim, in which 

 the animals were fed with green clover cut at four differ- 

 ent periods of growth, No. 1 being the youngest and No. 

 4 the oldest. The first line (a.) of the table gives the per- 

 centage obtained by dividing the quantity of non-nitroge- 

 nous matter actually digested by the amount of nitrogen- 

 free extract found by analysis, and hence shows how much 

 the amount actually digested varied from the theoretical 

 amount. The second line (&.) gives the percentage of the 

 crude fibre which was digested. 





No. 1. 



No. 2. 



No 3. 



No. 4. 



(a) 

 (b.) 



111.9 

 60.0 



105.5 

 53 



101.8 

 49.6 



88 5 

 38.8 



