204. STORRS AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 
DIGESTION EXPERIMENTS WITH SHEEP. 
BY C. S. PHELPS. ; 
In estimating the values of different feeding stuffs, by chem- 
ical analysis as well as in connection with feeding experiments 
conducted by the Station, very useful information is gained by 
testing the actual digestibility of the materials. Only that part 
of the food which the animal can digest is of value for purposes 
of nutrition. We need to know, therefore, not only the chem- 
ical composition of a fodder article, but also the proportions of 
the various nutrients which are digested, in order to judge of 
its nutritive value, From experiments made elsewhere, it has 
been found that all animals of the same class, such as rumi- 
nants, digest their food in practically the same way, and that 
the digestibility of a given feeding stuff by sheep may be taken 
as a nearly accurate measure of the digestibility of the same 
fodder by a cow or steer. As the care and labor required in 
digestion experiments with sheep is much less than with larger 
‘animals, sheep have been used in the digestion experiments 
here reported. 7 
The method of conducting these experiments is described 
in the Annual Report of the Station for 1894, pages 107-109. 
For the present purpose the following brief summary will 
suffice. 
The sheep were kept in pens about five feet square, with 
mangers arranged so as to prevent loss of food by scattering. 
Fach experiment lasted twelve days. The first seven days 
were devoted to preliminary feeding, during which the feces 
were not collected and each animal had the run of the pen. 
_ At the end of this period the sheep were placed in narrow stalls, 
where they remained during the five days of the digestion ex- 
periment proper, during which the feces were collected in 
rubber lined bags. | 
The feeding stuffs, the uneaten residues, and the feces were 
each weighed and analyzed. The differences between the 
amounts of organic matter and nutrients in the food eaten and 
the amounts of the same ingredients in the feces were taken as 
the measure of the amounts digested. The metabolic products 
in the feces are here treated as part of the undigested residue 
of the food. 







