170 SOUTH KENNEBEC SOCIETY. 



be eaten clean, and stock kept in good condition. My fodder 

 is often eaten so close that there is not sufficient waste for 

 bedding for a single horse and a hog or two. Some twenty 

 or more years ago, having a short crop of hay, I kept four cows 

 from the commencement of the foddering season till into April 

 on wheat straw with a peck of ruta bagas a day to each cow; 

 and they were in better condition in the spring than I have ever 

 been able to liave them when wintered entirely on hay. I have 

 been equally successful in keeping young stock in the same 

 manner. Young cattle that were thin in the fall, coming out 

 so as to be tempting to the butchers in the spring. I have re- 

 peatedly had offers from butchers for young cattle and store 

 cows in early spring, when the stock wanted had been kept, up 

 to the time, on straw and turnips alone. I consider them the 

 cheapest and the best feed a farmer can raise for making beef, 

 — four bushels of ruta bagas are worth more for me to feed to 

 beef cattle than a bushel of corn meal. Still there are practi- 

 cal farmers who say they are not worth feeding to stock ; and 

 scientific men put them down as possessing very little nutritive 

 matter — much below potatoes, carrots or beets. So wide a 

 difference between their conclusions and my own, I can account 

 for only in one of the three following ways, viz : either those 

 farmers raise, and the men of science have analyzed a different 

 kind of Swedish turnip from that I have raised, or they are en- 

 tirely wrong in their conclusions ; or their effect on my stock 

 must be accounted for something on the principle that neighbor 



W' drank the rum — " not because he liked the taste of it, 



hut because it makes the water taste so good:'' not because they 

 do them any good, but because it makes the hay benefit thcni 

 so much. 



Of all the root crops I think the Swedish turnip is best 

 adapted to common farm production for stock feeding. It can 

 be produced cheaper than any other root, except some of the 

 lighter kinds of turnips, as the Cow Horn and Norfolk. I con- 

 sider it of more value by measure than carrots, and equal by 

 weight, (being some ten or fifteen pounds to the bushel heavier,) 

 and more nutritive than potatoes or the coarse beets often 

 recommended so highly. It keeps better tlian any of them. It 

 can be raised on any kind of land capable of being plowed and 



