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FEEDING BEET PULP AND SUGAR BEETS TO COWS. 
PART II. INTRODUCTION. 
The experiments here reported were among the first 
planned to compare the feeding value of sugar beets and 
pulp from beet sugar factories. The value of roots to fur¬ 
nish succulent food during the winter when green pasture is 
not available, has long been well understood, and such suc¬ 
culent foods are considered especially desirable for cows pro¬ 
ducing milk. The pulp has a smaller nutritive value than 
beets because the sugar and salts which have been extracted 
at the factory are important food products, but there is no 
question about its succulence. Fresh pulp contains about ten 
per cent more water than beets. If the office of roots in a 
ration is to supply juicy foods which will aid in the digestion 
and assimilation of the roughage and grain fed with it, rather 
than for the nutritive effect, we would expect pulp to possess 
the necessary qualifications. The manufacture of silage from 
corn and other roughage is done to extend the summer con¬ 
ditions of green food through the rest of the year 
when the animal’s system is apt to become clogged with 
dry grain and dry hay to such an extent that the digestive 
tract does not perform its normal function. 
That the main use of roots or beet pulp is to prevent 
mal-nutrition and insure general health, rather than to sup¬ 
ply food, can hardly be questioned. Food nutrients can be 
supplied in concentrated form, but in order for the animal 
to make use of them he must be given bulk to fill up and 
distend the digestive organs, and the food must be porous 
and permeable by the digestive fluids. Laplanders eat in¬ 
fusorial earth, which is simply a chalky soil, to help fill up 
the stomach and dilute the whale blubber which is almost 
pure fat and forms the chief part of their diet. 
Beets or beet pulp given our farm animals supply 
quantities of tender living plant cells which are filled with 
juices and which dilute, soften and separate the particles of dry 
hay and grain so the nutritive qualities of the whole may be 
more efficiently digested and absorbed out of the mass. This 
is aptly illustrated by a statement made to one of us by a 
feeder of long experience. Tie stated that one winter he fol¬ 
lowed the usual practice of running hogs with his steers to 
