Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1900-01-26
Streaming FOOD.

STEAMlNG FOOD.
Advantages and Disadvantages Of
Cooking For Stock.
There is much difference of opinion
vantages or losses from cooking food
for farm stock, says The American
Cultivator. There can be no question
that most animals like their food bet
ter when cooked and will eat it more
greedily. But whether they will eat
more food in it's cooked state is not so
certain. Cooking by steaming makes
the. dried c%ornstalks as s%ucculent as
they could be if put up green in the
silo and without the slight loss by fer
mentation that ensilage pays Is the
price of keeping it sweet. The steam
ed straw cornstalks and hay are in the
best possible condition for adding to
them meal, wheat bran or wheat mid
dlings, thus making the ration much
more palatable and nutritious than it
could be made without cooking.
But it must be remembered that all
the starchy foods when wet and cook
ed expand so much that the stomachs
Of all nonruminant animals cannot hold
as much nutrition as if they were fed
dry and uncooked. They do not eat
so much as they seem to, and nature is
not to be cheated. The smaller ration
in nutrition at least of cooked meal or
grain digests much quicker, and in the
case Of pigs the animals will be almost
ready to squeal for more an hour or
two after eating a hearty meal. AS the
rule with most farmers is to feed fat
tening hogs only twice or at most
three times a day, this cooked food
goes through them so rapidly that they
are hungry a good deal Of the time.
Many experiments have shown that
uncooked dry meal will fatten hogs
faster than anything else. Then the
meal expands while it is inside the
hogs stomach, and most Of the time
the hog is sleeping off the effects Of its
hearty dinner. 1t is possible that II al
lowed all they will eat of dry meal
hogs will eat too much for their own
good. Whole corn in the ear. requiring
the animal to eat it slowly, will posi-
bly, fatten hogs faster than either cook
ed or uncooked cornmeal.
In all ruminant animals it is danger
GUS to feed meal or grain in large
amounts without mixing it with some
more bulky and less nutritious food
that requires reconsideration. This will
send it to the first stomach to be cast
up n few hours later as a cud to be
chewed after 1t has been softened by
the juices of the stomach. Where
whole grain and meal are fed to cattle
without being mixed Hith some more
bulky substance it usually goes to the
second stomach and thence into the in
testines, just as the cud does when it
has been thoroughly chewed. If this
grain or meal has not been swollen by
cooking or steaming, it will so distend
the smaller stomach and intestines as
to produce the most serious results.
Even the cut feed covered with meal
If fed to cattle should always be well
steamed, so as to expand the meal be-
fore it is eaten. There will be more ex-
pansion in the stomach, but what it
gets before it is eaten will prevent it
from doing much if any injury. But
this cooked food requires more fire.
quent feeding than is best for contin-
ued good digestion, so that even rumi-
nant animals will not usually, except
While quite young, fare as well on food
that is cooked as on that e. N raw
and which requires a longer !e to d.
gest. There should be a rest for the
digestive organs between meals, and
this rest should come, so far as posi-
bic, at regular intervals. When q fully
grown animal has it's food made so
nearly ready for digestion that it
passes off in one or two hours, it soon
appears to be eating all the time and Of
course only a little at each meal. Such
feeding is sure to injure digestion.