Q 



08 ox THE ECONOMICAL USE OF TUENIPS 



experience goes, I have found that swede turnips are constipat- 

 ing and heating, and consequently the ewes, while seeming to 

 a casual observer to be doing very well, may be gradually getting 

 out of health from a disordered stomach, and imperceptibly 

 drifting into a state of low fever, which, too frequently, if not 

 almost invariably, ends in abortion and death. A careful 

 observer of ewes fed on swede turnips will frequently see the 

 dung of the ewe becoming dark in colour and of a hard buttony 

 character. This should be a warning to any llockmaster to 

 change the food of his ewes at once, or bad results will follow. 

 Of course the heating effiect of the swedes could be somewhat 

 corrected by reducing the daily allowance and by a liberal use 

 of fresh broad bran mixed with iiay chaff. Too often, however, 

 this supplementary health-giving food is omitted. It is a fixed 

 idea amongst observing shepherds in the eastern counties of 

 England, that turnips grown from superphosphate manure are 

 most dangerous food for breeding ewes. I myself believe this, 

 but probably the shepherds and myself arrive at the same con- 

 clusion from different points of view. The shepherds believe 

 that the ewes ' lick up,' as they call it, the manure when feed- 

 ing on the turnips, and so strongly is the feeling impressed upon 

 the minds of many shepherds that nothing will induce them to 

 pull up the roots of the turnips. My idea is, that turnips grown 

 from superphosphates are of inferior quality, from growing very 

 rapidly at first wdiile feeding upon the soluble superphosphates, 

 but when this manure is somewhat exhausted, and dry weather 

 sets in about September; the growth of the root is checked, and 

 a good deal of what I w^ould almost call woody fibre is formed in 

 the root. When ewes are fed on such turnips during winter, the 

 food is both indigestible and innutritions. Just at the time 

 when the lamb in the womb is, as it were, sapping the life-blood 

 of the ewe, the poor creature is losing power by being fed on 

 innutritions food, aud the result must be death, or probably 

 abortion first and death afterwards. If flock-masters would not 

 be so ' penny wise,' — as unfortunately too many are, — and would 

 give their ew^es some linseed cake, crushed oats, and fresh broad 

 bran mixed with hay chaff, then I believe that turnips grow^n 

 from superphosphate manure could be fed off with breeding 

 ewes without running the very great risk many persons now 

 incur from the use of such roots." 



Part of the food suhstituted for the Turnips loithheld 



should he bulky. 



But the question now presents itself, if it is unnatural, waste- 

 ful, and, in the case of some classes of stock, also prejudicial to 

 health to give a large and especially an unlimited supply of 



