ff, which has become softened, and prepared for ready digestion."
A cheap plan is to mix the straw with sliced roots, moisten the mass
with water, and allow it to remain until a slight fermentation has set
in. This process effectually softens and disintegrates, so to speak, the
woody fibre, and sets free the stores of nutritious matters which it
envelopes. Some farmers who hold straw in high estimation, prefer giving
it just as it comes from the field; they base this practice on the
belief that Ruminants require a bulky and solid food, and that their
digestive powers are quite sufficient to effect the solution of all the
useful constituents of the straw. It may be quite true that cattle, as
asserted, can extract more nutriment out of straw than horses can, but
that merely proves the greater power of their digestive organs. No doubt
the food of the Ruminants should be bulky; but I am quite sure that
cooked or fermented straw is sufficiently so to satisfy the desire of
those animals for quantity in their food.

So far as I can learn, all the carefully conducted feeding experiments
to test the value of straw which have been made, have yielded results
highly favorable to that article. Mr. Blundell, in a paper on "The Use
and Abuse of Straw," read before the Botley (Hampshire) Farmer's Club,
states that in his experience he found straw to be more economical than
its equivalent of roots or oil-cake, in the feeding of all kinds of
cattle:--

I find (says Mr. Blundell) that dairy cows, in the winter months,
if fed on large quantities of roots, particularly mangels and
carrots, will refuse to eat straw almost entirely, and become
very lean; but they will always eat a full portion of sweet,
well-harvested straw, when they get a small and moderate allowance
of roots, say, for an ordinary-sized cow, 15 lbs. of mangel three
times per day, the roots being given whole, just in the state they
come from the store heap. Again, calves and yearlings being fed
with roots in the same way, will eat a large quantity of straw, and
when they have been kept under cover I have had them in first-rate
condition for many years past. Also, in fattening beasts, when they
get a fair allowance of roots, say 65 to 70 lbs. per day, with
from 3 to 4 lbs. of cake or meal in admixture, they will eat straw
with great avidity, and do well upon it, and make a profit. It is,
however, often the case that