Natural & artificial digestion of crude fiber compared with chemical methods of estimation

Abstract

In digestion trials at the Missouri Agricultural Experiment Station on feeding steers in the "Use of Food" investigations it has been found that 84- 65 percent of the total feed is digested while it was observed that considerable was present in the dung undigested. That is, the total digestion coefficient runs from 84- 65 percent on all the seventeen animals studied on definite feed. An attempt to determine the percent of feed found in the dung has been made by washing out the metabolic nitrogen which interferes. This feed averaged 3.15 percent for eleven determinations given in Table I. The present study is essentially a continuation of this by reviewing the literature and studying the factors which influence the coefficient for protein and crude fiber digestion in the animal's digestive organism and therefore also the constituents of the feed in the dung.