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Heating And Fermentation

Categories: Grains and Forage Crops

Please explain why dampness will cause anything like hay, Egyptian corn

or other like products to heat.



Heating is due to fermentation, which means the action upon the

vegetable substance of germs which begin to grow and multiply after

their kind whenever conditions favor them. The earlier stages of this

action is called "sweating," and it is beneficial as in the case of hay,

tobacco, dried fruits, etc.,
s is commonly recognized - resulting in

what is known as curing - and it is the art of the handler of such

products not to allow the action to go beyond what may be called the

normal "sweating." If not checked by proper handling, which involves

drying, cooling, etc., fermentation will continue, and other germs will

find conditions suitable for them to take up their work of destruction,

and this new action produces higher temperature still, and if not

checked by cooling or drying or otherwise making the substance

inhospitable to them, "heating" will result, and thence onward rapidly

to decay, if they have everything their own way.



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