MAKUAL Ot OATTLE-FKEDr^O- 2G7 



to liave been taken to avoid this, but no incr^eme of digest- 

 ibility as a result of cooking is shown. 



In these experiments the steamed fodder was pnrposely 

 allowed to cool before it was used, in order to observe only 

 the effect of cooking, and no preference for the steamed 

 fodder on the part of the cattle was observed, but rather 

 the revei-se. In practice, however, the palatability of a 

 fodder may often be very considerably increased by suita- 

 ble preparation, and the animals thus induced to eat larger 

 quantities of a fodder not perhaps agreeable to them in its 

 natural state. It would seem that some gain must also 

 accrue from wami fodder (see p. 289), The preparation of 

 fodder may thus produce very favorable results in a prac- 

 tical point of view, although the quantity of nutrients 

 which an animal extracts from a given amount of dry 

 substance is no gi'eater in one case than the other. 



As in the case of coarse fodder, the digestibility of con- 

 centrated fodders is not increased by tlie metliod of prep- 

 aration. This is sho\\T3, e, g.^ by experiments made in 

 Mdckern on feeding bran to oxen ; not only was the diges- 

 tibility not increased, but, on the contrary, decreased more 

 or less by boiling, addition of leaven and production of in- 

 cipient fermentation, and still more by successive treatment 

 with alkalies and acids. The effect w^as greatest on the 

 protein and least on the non-nitrogenous constituents. 



Digestibility by Difierent Kinds of Animals. — The 

 different kinds of ruminating animals, as oxen, cows, sheep, 

 and goats, digest the same fodder equally well. 



As a mean of about forty single determinations, the di- 

 gestibility of all the constituents of meadow hay is found 

 to be about 2 per cent, greater in the case of oxen and 

 cows than in that of sheep, while, in a still greater num- 

 ber of experiments, clover-hay or green clover is found 



