Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1888-03-02

Prof Brown of the Ontario Agricultural
college at Guelph, Canada, recently sum
med up the usefulness of bran to farmers,
after having carefully considered its chem
ical composition
!. Bran is a concentrated food which,
though variable in composition, possesses
high nutritive value.
,. Roller process bran is, ON the aver
age, richer than old process bran.
B. Its excess of ash or mineral matters
eminently fits it for bone building in grow
ing animals, and for experimenting the lack
of mineral matter in roots
4. Its chemical composition points to
the conclusion that it is somewhat better
adapted to the formation of fat and pro
duction of heat than to the formation of
muscle or milk
D. Both its chemical composition and its
physical form adapt it admirably as a sup
Elementary food to be used in connection
with poor and bulky fodder, such as straw
and roots.
u. Its manural or fertilizing value alone
repays its cost.
I. BY retaining and feeding the bran
upon the farm the objection of selling the
gram Is partly overcome, viz the eXhaus-
ton of the soil, since the bran retains most
derived from the air
Prof. Browns summary of the merits of
bran will be taken by the average farmer
as rather an over estimate of its value
Food is valuable not alone for the proper
ton of nutritive matter which it contains
Its value depends upon the quantity of such
matter that is digestble All this has of
talr int IA
making the above estimate The digesti-
BILE portions of each kind of food, and of
its separate parts, are supposed to be known
at the agricultural colleges and stations.
But these precisely accurate determinations
of the digestible parts of foods, which the
agricultural chemist processes to find to a
hundredth part of one per cent, must he
taken with some allowance. 1t is a we'll
known fact that kind of food that is indi-
gestible, and even poisonous to one person.
may be relishing and nutritious to another,
and that an article of food that is eaten
, with relish and good effect at one period of
life, may become harmful at another peri
cd. There may be a similar difference in
animals. 1t is not at all probable that all
animals digest the same per cent Of any
certain kind of food, or that the chemical
tests of digestibity show exactly the pro-
portion that may be dgested by healthy
animal
The new process bran consists of very
thin scale of the outer covering of wheat.
1t is much like the shell of beech-nut-
only thinner. If, as as stated by Prof.
Brown, it is richer than the bran by the
old process-which contains more of the
part of the kernel next to the outer cover
ing, or more of what now goes into the
middlings-it appears to the average sight
to be much less dgestible. But the chem
ist makes the amount of digestible matter
in wheat bran and in middlmgs nearly the
same-each about 20 per cent Of the part
remaining after drying out about 10 per
cent of water.
The ''mapurial or fertilizing value" of
bran does not "alone repay its cost" here.
Various analyses give the value Of the fer
tiliEing material in ton Of bran at from
$l2 to Sl5, But in these analyses the val
ne is computed by using the high retail
prices for nitrogen, phosphoric acid aud
potash fixed by the experiment stations
1t includes the whole Of these fertilizing
constituents of the bran, while but part of
it is saved in the manure. Bran is now
worth about $23 per ton. For this locality,
at the present price of bran it would per
haps be nearer the truth to say that "the
manurial value of bran alone repays about
half its cost