Dee. 2, 1920.] Agricultural Gazette of N.S.W. 853 



Chaif (oaten or wheaten). — Has not the same value as lucerne, but is a 

 good bulk food. Eeally good chaff, as produced in this country, can be fed 

 alone, and will provide good sustenance without additional food, though it 

 is better to add bran for breeding ewes. Poor chaff is not very much better 

 than straw. 



Straw. — Can be very largely utilised in the feeding of sheep; and while 

 barley straw is probably the best, oat and wheat straw can both be made 

 use of. Its palatability is greatly increased and its nutritive value raised 

 if given with molasses. If a lucerne ration is being fed, straw can be 

 used to replace portion of this ration, without lowering the value of the 

 ration to a serious extent. 



Silage. — Silage is always of value. To obtain the best results some 

 portion of the feed should be dry roughage, such as lucerne hay or straw. 



Linseed and other Meals. — Supplied in small quantities to sheep being 

 trough-fed on chaff or straw, these can entirely replace bran and grain, as 

 they are rich in nitrogenous material and in mineral salts. 



These notes apply to the feeding of sheep in dry periods with a view to 

 preventing mortality apart from actual starvation — although, as already 

 indicated, nearly all such mortality is really at basis slow starvation. 

 It is not intended here to discuss feeding from the point of view of fatten- 

 ing, but it may advisedly be pointed out that so long as our sheep are 

 exposed to the extremes of feeding which exist in New South Wales, so long 

 must heavy mortality be expected. The maintenance of food supplies on 

 a more even basis would prevent a very great deal of this mortality, and 

 though such ideas are impracticable to a great extent in the case of the 

 large sheep-run, they are not so on many sheep farms. The most obvious 

 methods of ensuring it are the conservation of hay and silage, the sub- 

 division and spelling of paddocks, and the growing of crops for grazing. 

 The future must inevitably see a great increase in the application of such 

 methods of reducing mortality. 



As already pointed out, much loss occurs from continued dry feeding, 

 and yet further loss is involved in the sudden change to extremely succulent 

 food. Surprise is often expressed that mortality in sheep is so heavy 

 after the appearance of what is referred to as good food, but as a matter 

 of fact such rapid-growing succulent food as appears after copious rains 

 following drought possesses very little body, and in the already weakened 

 condition of the animal will not sustain life, particularly as at such times 

 the animal requires the production of a good deal of bodily heat. The 

 question then arises of the possibility of supplying some dry roughage in 

 addition to the green food. 



Apart from these direct effects of feeding on mortality, it has, it may be 

 reiterated, a somewhat indirect influence in leading to many deaths 

 among ewes prior to lambing. It is not suggested that every such case is 

 dietetic in origin, but it is desired to stress the intimate connection between 

 feeding and many such cases of heavy loss. These deaths are in all pro- 

 bability due to a complexity of causes beginning with lack of digestible and 



