Abstract
ACCORDING to an annotation entitled "Fir to Fodder" in the January issue of the Anglo-Swedish Review, the Swedish forests provide a practically inexhaustible store of timber which can be converted into fodder for horses and cattle. It can be made from the wood of the fir tree, but pine can also be used. The raw wood has no food value for man, even if ground to a fine flour, as there are no enzymes or micro-organisms in the human digestive tract to dissolve the wood and its cellulose. Cattle and 'horses, however, can absorb it almost entirely because their digestive organs contain bacteria which can break down the pure cellulose into products which can be absorbed into the blood. To make the fodder cellulose more nutritive and palatable to animals, molasses and sometimes phosphates or salts are added at the pulp mill. Alcohol is also obtained during the process of making fodder pulp.
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Cattle Fodder from Wood. Nature 153, 249 (1944). https://doi.org/10.1038/153249b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/153249b0
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