292 ON THE ECONOMICAL USE OF TUKNIPS 



of turnips. This means, be it understood, the consumption by 

 each animal of from 1-J cwt. to 2 cwt. daily, according to its age 

 and weight, cattle two-and-a-half years old and upwards getting 

 through the larger quantity. When cattle are put upon a 

 restricted allowance, the daily consumption varies from half a 

 cwt. to not much short of 1^ cwt., the substitutes given along 

 with this diminished supply being very various. 



The practice of feeding sheep on nothing but turnips was for 

 a considerable number of years all but universal in Scotland, 

 and it still prevails more extensively than the similar method 

 does in regard to cattle. Young store sheep folded upon turnips 

 seldom get any dry food, except the very limited quantity of 

 long hay or straw which they take out of the sheep-racks. The 

 most enterprising and skilful feeders are in the habit of allow- 

 iua: both af^^ed wethers and half-bred and other lambs, beino' 

 pushed forward for the fat market, a pretty liberal allowance of 

 OTain and cake for several months before thev are sold, but 

 there is still a large proportion of owners who allow their sheep 

 to subsist upon turnips alone during the whole winter. The 

 system widely followed in the south-west of Scotland, and in 

 other districts, of the growers of the turnips letting the con- 

 sumption of their crop to sheep-feeders at so much per head 

 per week, tends to perpetuate the practice of feeding them upon 

 nothing but roots. Even those owners of sheep who are in 

 favour of giving them supplemental food, are not unnaturally 

 unwillinc^ to defrav the entire cost of doincr so, while most of the 

 farmers do not seem to realise that, on account of the enhanced 

 manurial value of the sheep's droppings, as well as the restricted 

 quantity of turnips which would be consumed, it would prove 

 remunerative to them either to accept of a less rate per week 

 for the board of the sheep, or to agree to pay a portion of the 

 cost of the cake or other dry food allowed. In many districts 

 where turnips are plentiful, it is customary for park ewes — 

 Cheviots and other breeds from which half-bred lambs are 

 reared — to be folded upon turnips during the months of Feb- 

 ruary and March ; in fact, from the former date they get nothing 

 but watery bulbs until the lambing season is close at hand, when 

 they are removed back to the pastures. The system — common 

 in the midland and southern counties of England — of giving 

 either feeding or breeding sheep cut hay or straw or chaff, is 

 followed to a very limited extent, although quite recently it has 

 also been growing in public favour, and is slowly but surely 

 extending. 



Object of this Paper. 



Our object in this paper is two-fold. (1.) To endeavour to 

 show that the system of feeding cattle upon an unlimited supptly 



