Additional Crops for Cows and Sheep. 143 



Such crops, together with permanent grass, practically always 

 secure ample food for stock from the middle of May to the 

 middle of July, while roots, hay, and straw in ordinary seasons 

 supply the food needed through the long wintering entailed by 

 the British climate. Additional foods, however, are needed 

 as an insurance against a short supply during abnormal 

 seasons ; and a man who carries a big head of stock without 

 sucli an insurance takes risks from which he may at some time 

 or another suffer heavily. These risks may result in difficulties 

 giving rise to shortness of keep for a longer or shorter time. 

 The special periods of short food against which the stock- 

 keeper has to guard are the later spring months between roots 

 and grass : the late summer resulting from a June and July 

 drought : and the autumn as a result of a late summer drought 

 which has stopped grasses and bulbing roots from growing. 

 In this last case the roots ai"e not fit for stock, and if fed in 

 a small and immature condition would imperil the winter 

 supply and accentuate the difficulties between roots and grass. 



The farmer ordinarily sets out a scheme of cropping 

 which, if conditions are favourable, will provide what he needs 

 for his stock ; but such a scheme can seldom be carried out 

 without change. This cropping is his first line of defence, 

 but unfavourable weather may drive him back from it on to 

 another line which he may have arranged, and even this again 

 he may be unable to maintain. Very few after the late prolonged 

 drought could have had much of their original schemes left. 

 Fortunately droughts are rarely so prolonged as this one was, 

 and the farmer has as a rule the means of redeeming his 

 position ; though the severe pinch felt from time to time shows 

 that he does not always take the opportunity. 



The spring shortage generally comes from a poor root crop, 

 and relief has to be looked for from catch crops — those avail- 

 able as food in autumn to save too early an attack on the root 

 crop, and those which come when the root crop runs short. 

 But as will probably, unfortunately, be found next spring, the 

 catch crops do not wholly meet the case ; therefore, those who 

 will suffer least are those who secured a plant of mangolds 

 before the drought's influence was great ; also those who had 

 put in a considerable area of cabbages and kale early. Cabbages 

 transplanted in the previous autumn or before the drought 

 started, where the land was kept well stirred, suffered little 

 from the summer drought. As is generally the case, cabbages, 

 kale, and kohl rabi are suitable for March and April drilling, 

 and if hoed out will always make good growth. When out of 

 2,000,000 acres under roots in this country only 65,000 of 

 cabbages and kales (some part of which will go to culinary 

 nse), and 13,000 of kohl rabi, are grown, it is quite certain 



