
DIGESTION EXPERIMENTS WITH SHEEP. Loy 
DIGESTION EXPERIMENTS WITH SHEEP. 
BY C. 5S. PHELPS AND CHAS, D. WOODS. 
It is a matter of every-day experience that only a part of the 
food eaten is actually used by the animal. It is, therefore, of 
importance in cattle feeding to have a-knowledge, not only of the 
chemical composition of a given food, but of the amounts of 
the nutrients which are capable of being assimilated. It is not 
so much what an animal eats, as that which it digests,* that is 
actually turned to account. 
Many analyses have been made of the different materials 
commonly used for food for cattle, and we have a fairly good 
knowledge of their composition. A good many experiments 
upon the digestibility of the different feeding stuffs have been 
made, but these are necessarily much less in number, and also 
less accurate than the analyses. Considering the short time that 
the experiment stations have been in operation in this country, 
the number of digestion experiments upon American feeding 
stuffs is quite considerable, but by far the larger number of 
experiments of this kind have been made in Europe and especi- 
allyin Germany. Just asit had been of great practical importance 
to make large numbers of analyses in order that we may know 
the average composition of American feeding stuffs, so it is 
important to have a large number of accurately conducted 
digestion experiments upon American feeding materials. The 
results already obtained are in many instances more valuable for 
our conditions than are those of the much larger number of 
German experiments. 
Partly to add to the stock of knowledge upon this important 
subject and partly because of the need of the results for use in 
connection with its feeding experiments, the Station began a 
year ago a series of digestion experiments with sheep. 

* The word digestibility as commonly used has more than one meaning. People often 
speak of one food as being more digestible than another, when they mean it is more quickly or 
easily digested. As here used, the term digestibility means the proportion of any given food 
or food constituent which is digested under usual conditions, without regard to the length of 
time or the ease of digestion. 
