AS FOOD FOE CATTLE AND SHEEP. 331 



as oats or cake, is allowed. This mixed diet of dry and watery 

 food, both of which are bulky, has the recommendation of 

 avoiding two extremes which are equally to be shunned. The 

 one consists in too liberal an allowance of cold watery bulbs 

 without a sufficiently counterbalancing supply of dry heat- 

 producing food. This will be seen at a glance when the 

 constituent elements of one day's diet, where sheep are fed 

 on turnips alone, is placed before the reader in the following 

 tabular form. It will be seen that we presume each sheep to 

 consume 20 lbs. of roots dailv. 



18 lbs. pure water. 

 1 lb. or sliglitly in excess thereof in flesh-forming, lieat-producing, and 



fattening elements. 

 % „ Avoody fibre. 



\ „ mineral ash, and pectinous substances, similar to jelly in most 

 kinds of fruit. 



20 „ total daily allowance. 



iSTow, here is the poor animal swallowing perhaps day by day 

 for six months without change 18 lbs., that is within a fraction 

 of two gallons, of water, and only the merest fraction above 

 1 lb. of food which is nourishing. Surely common sense 

 condemns this as unnatural and unwise. The other extreme 

 avoided by this mixed diet lies in giving dry food either alone 

 or in too large a proportion, which is not only expensive as 

 regards the first cost, but also unfavourable to the health and 

 general thriving of the animals. 



When the roots are pulped the smashed turnips and the cut 

 straw are mixed together in the same way as the like mixture 

 is used for cattle, and given to the sheep in troughs. In some 

 instances hand-pulpers, costing from £3 to £3, 10s. each, are 

 used in the field, the fodder being carted out in a cut form from 

 the steading, where it is cut by water, steam, or horse power. 

 In other cases the pulping is also accomplished by power at 

 the farm offices, and the mixed pulp is carted out once a day 

 or oftener to the field wdiere the sheep are folded or running 

 at large. The question which of these plans is the preferable 

 depends entirely on the special circumstances of each farm, 

 such as the distance of tlie fields from the offices, the facilities 

 whicli exist for driving tlie ])ul]H^.r, and such like considerations. 

 Our limits do not permit us to quote testimonies at our com- 

 mand as to the practicability and advantage of ])ulping roots to 

 the various classes of sheep stock. We can testify as the result 

 of close personal observations tliat the system of pul})ing in the 

 fields with aband-}»ulper is ([uite practicable without any undue 

 strain on the man wlio (hives tlie pulper. No doubt it would 

 be too severe labour to drive sucli a macliine all day long, but 

 it is after all little lieavier than an ordinary sheep-slicer of a 



