COLORADO FODDERS 
AN EXAMINATION INTO THEIR COMPOSITION AND COMPARATIVE VALUES 
By W. P. HEADDEN 
Sec. I. In Bulletin No. 39 of this Station, I endeavored to 
study alfalfa, clover, pea-vine, and our native hay, but particularly 
alfalfa hay with special regard to the carbohydrates, including un¬ 
der this term the crude fibre and nitrogen-free extract. 
§2. In Bulletin No. 93 I have given the results of experiments 
on the digestibility of alfalfa, timothy and native hay, also on the 
saltbush, A triplex argentea, corn fodder and sorghum. 
§3. In Bulletin 93, I followed the beaten path and gave the 
coefficients of digestion as obtained for the usual groups, proteids, 
crude fibre, nitrogen-free extract, etc. In the present bulletin, I 
shall take up the same hays and fodders treated of in Bulletin No. 
93, but I shall consider them from the standpoint of Bulletin No. 
39, following the same general method that I used in that work, but 
extending it very considerably. 
§4. While it might be of scientific interest to study the ether 
extract, it is not a very important factor in the study of the coarse 
fodders presented in this bulletin as it, at most, amounts to only a 
small percentage of these fodders, usually to less than three per 
cent., and these three per cent, are composed of fats, waxes, color¬ 
ing and other matters, none of which are involved in the questions 
which form the object of this study. 
§5. I have discovered no good reason for taking up the ex¬ 
tract by absolute alcohol, so I began the work by extraction with 
boiling 80 per cent, alcohol, which removes coloring matter, sugars 
and extractives. We found that extraction with four portions of 
alcohol, boiling each portion 20 minutes, was quite sufficient to ex¬ 
haust the sample. We used 10 grams of hay and 450 c. c. of alco¬ 
hol. The amount extracted by the fourth portion of alcohol 
amounted to only 0.30 of one per cent, of the air dried hay. 
§6. We attempted to evaporate the extracts to dryness and 
weigh them, but in checking against the weight of the dried residue 
we found a difference of about two per cent., i. e., the dried extracts 
were about this much too low. After considerable work to see if 
we could not obtain better agreement between the direct weighings 
of the extracts and the weight of the remaining hay, we decided to 
take the loss of weight as indicated by the residual hay as the weight 
of the material extracted. Had we been trying to obtain results to 
be expressed in terms of the extract, this method would of course, 
not be admissable, but as we have expressed all results in terms of 
