VALUE OF BEET-LEAVES. 401 



The leaves in the pits begin soon to ferment, and to dis- 

 charge moisture, which the straw absorbs. They retain a 

 strong smell until January, when they turn sweet by degrees, 

 and are on that account freely eaten by cattle. Sixty 

 pounds of fresh green leaves produce forty pounds of pre- 

 served leaf-mass, one acre furnishing thus about thirty-nine 

 hundred pounds of such food, which, taking a hundred pounds 

 of hay worth one dollar, is valued at sixteen and three-tenths 

 cents per hundred pounds. One acre would thus produce 

 in food derived from the leaves six dollars and thirty-five 

 cents. Fresh leaves have eleven and ninety-nine hundredths 

 per cent of dry substance ; preserved leaves contain fifteen 

 per cent : the leaves of one .acre of sugar-beet root contain 

 therefore five hundred and eighty-five pounds of dry sub- 

 stance, which, multiplied by one and three-fourths, gives 

 about a thousand pounds of manure from this source of food. 

 The leaves are never fed by themselves. 



Grouven recommends the following composition of food 

 for every thousand pounds of live weight per day: forty 

 to fifty pounds of preserved leaf-mass, forty pounds press- 

 cakes, three pounds of oil-cake, with six pounds of hay. 

 Preserved beet-leaves, it appears from experiments of Tod, 

 increase the production of milk in quality and quantity; 

 whilst press-cakes, if exclusively used, reduce its quantity 

 decidedly. A mixed food of a hundred pounds of press- 

 cakes with seventy-five pounds of preserved leaves, pro- 

 duced, for every hundred pounds of leaves fed, an increase 

 of twenty-four pounds and a half of milk per day as com- 

 pared with a corresponding feeding of press-cakes alone. 



The value of press-cakes and preserved leaves for the sup- 

 port of live-stock, particularly during a period when food as 

 a general rule becomes scarce, and thus expensive, must be 

 quite apparent, especially when we consider further that 

 every ton of sugar-beets raised furnishes four hundred pounds 

 of press-cakes and four hundred pounds of fresh leaves, and 

 that an ordinary factory consumes from forty to fifty tons 

 of beet-roots per day during five months. 



In cases where stock feeding is no part of the enterprise, 

 or where plenty of other kinds of food is at hand, the leaves 

 while still green are ploughed under. The part which the 

 beet-leaves perform in the absorption of mineral constituents 



