Nov. 13,1916 
Vegetable-Ivory Meal 
3ii 
on metabolism, one is justified in assuming that the vegetable-ivory meal 
can not have as high a nutritive effect as has the corn meal. 
Experiment III.—As another means of determining how completely 
vegetable-ivory meal was digested, Experiment III was undertaken, feed¬ 
ing the same amounts of the several feeds as in Experiment I. The 
basal ration consisted of hay and gluten feed, and the ration proper 
of the same feeds in like quantities, plus 200 gm. of vegetable-ivory 
meal. Each ration was fed for 14 consecutive days, the feces being 
collected for the last 7 days in each period, and aliquots preserved. 
In this experiment the hay, gluten feed, and vegetable-ivory meal ration 
preceded the basal ration of hay and gluten feed. The feces were tested 
for total sugar after acid hydrolysis, to note whether the percentage of 
sugar was higher in the ivory-meal period than in the period without the 
meal. It is understood that little or no sugar should appear as such in 
normal feces, and the relatively large amounts which are reported below 
are accounted for as a result of the hydrolysis of pentosans and other 
hemicelluloses, largely from the hay. It was necessary to hydrolyze 
with strong acid and boiling in order to include completely the sugar 
of the vegetable ivory, if any, which might have passed through the 
animal unchanged. 
On a dry-matter basis it was found that the average carbohydrate 
content, estimated as dextrose, for the feces of the hay, gluten, and 
ivory-meal period was 25.46 per cent and that for the hay and gluten 
period was 24.68 per cent. In other words, the total amount of carbo¬ 
hydrates, so called, found in the feces when vegetable ivory had been 
included in the ration was only 0.78 per cent more than was found when 
it had not been included. This is relatively such a small amount that 
it seems safe to conclude that very little, if any, of the carbohydrate 
of the vegetable ivory escaped undigested. The mannan therefore ap¬ 
pears to have been quite thoroughly hydrolyzed and assimilated by the 
sheep. 
FEEDING EXPERIMENTS 
Experiment I.—During March, April, and May, 1914, an experi¬ 
ment to compare the relative feeding value of vegetable-ivory meal and 
corn meal was carried out and may be described as follows: 
Three pairs of cows were fed for periods of five weeks each, exclusive 
of preliminary periods of 10 days, on basal rations consisting daily for 
each cow of substantially 2.5 pounds of wheat bran, 2.5 pounds of cotton¬ 
seed meal, and what hay the animals would eat clean (about 20 pounds). 
Either 3 pounds of vegetable-ivory meal or 3 pounds of corn meal were 
fed in addition. The experiment was conducted on the reversal plan— 
that is, one cow of each pair was fed the basal ration plus the vegetable 
ivory for five weeks, while the other received corn meal; then the ration 
was reversed for five weeks (Table XII). 
