FACILITY OF DIGESTION A FACTOR IN FEEDING 7 
that are fed on hay alone, in the usual way of feeding, a little 
less than they will eat. Were much more quiet than cows fed 
mostly on meal with a little feeding of hay, say four or five 
pounds per day. We could not discover any signs of suffer- 
ing or unrest in any way whatever.” 
On a second visit of the committee, thirteen days after hay 
feeding had been resumed in the spring, the cows were “filled 
up” and did not appear different from others which had been 
wintered in the usual way. The committee further reported 
that the calves from the cows “are of more than ordinary 
size, fleshy, strong, active and healthy.” 
This system of feeding, or absence of feeding, excited much 
discussion in the agricultural press at the time, but the prac- 
tice seems never to have become general and the subject is al- 
most forgotten.* 
The point of interest in the above experiment was the small 
amount of nutrients required to maintain an animal. The 
Wolff maintenance standard for a 900-pound animal called for 
63 pound of protein, 7.2 pounds of carbohydrates and .09 
pound of fat. Based upon average digestion coefficients, the 
three quarts of corn meal (4.5 pounds) would contain .35 
pound of protein, 3 pounds of carbohydrates and .19 pound of 
fat. The maintenance ration for a 900-pound animal calls for 
7.93 pounds of digestible nutrients. In the Miller trial the 
4.5 pounds of meal contained 3.54 pounds of nutrients, or 50 
per cent. less. 
Neither from the above comparison or from the experiments 
that follow does the writer wish to be understood as advocating 
exclusive meal feeding. These trials are of interest, however, 
as illustrating a principle or factor in animal nutrition that 
experimenters have frequently lost sight of, viz., that digest- 
ible nutrients in concentrated feeds are more valuable pound 
for pound than digestible nutrients in roughages, because less 
energy is required by the animal in the former case to render 
them. available. 
*Henry’s Feeds and Feeding, p. 94. 
