260 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



faction, it would form a valuable article of cattle-feed in regions from 

 which it is now excluded by the expense of transportation and its own 

 odoriferous nature.' 



"In remarking upon this the secretary of the board said that if sheep 

 would eat the scrap readily, much poor hay or straw could be used to 

 good advantage, thus allowing the farmer to consume all his first-quality 

 hay in keeping other stock. He thought the meat would not taste of 

 the flavor imparted by the scrap, provided other food was substituted 

 for a proper length of time before slaughtering. 



"From time to time following this, the matter was discussed before 

 the board, and formed the subject of many articles in the agricultural 

 journals. In 1869, Mr. M. L. Wilder,* of Pembroke, then a member of 

 the board, presented a brief paper embodying his experience in the use 

 of scrap as a feed for sheep, in which he said he believed 'fish offal to 

 be not only cheaper, but much superior to any other kind of provender 

 he had ever used ' for this purpose. An extract from his paper is given : 

 ' I keep about one hundred sheep, and have fed fish offal to them for 

 the past ten years. The offal is made from herring caught in weirs, 

 salted the same as for smoking, cooked, and the oil pressed out, leaving 

 a pomace for which the sheep are more eager than for grain. For the 

 last three winters I have kept my sheep on threshed straw with one- 

 half pound per day to each sheep of dried fish pomace, or one pound of 

 green (as it shrinks one-half in drying), and they came out in the spring 

 in much better condition than when fed on good English hay with corn. 

 I consider the dry pomace worth as much as corn, pound for pound. 

 When I have had enough to give them one-half pound per day, I have 

 found that the weight of the fleece was increased one-quarter, and not 

 only that but also the carcass in a like proportion ; the weight of the 

 fleeces per head averaging from five to seven pounds.' 



"Similar statements to the above were made by Hon. Samuel Wassont 

 and other gentlemen, not only at public meetings of the board, but 

 through the press, so that the subject has been kept alive and invested 

 with some interest down to the present time. 



Experiments of Professor Farrington on fish scrap vs. corn meal as food 



for sheep. 



" 323. Wishing to test the value of scrap as a feed with more care than 

 had apparently attended any of the trials that had been reported, and 

 also wishing to make a sort of competitive trial of it in connection with 

 corn, a quantity was obtained for this purpose of Mr. M. L. Wilder, of 

 Pembroke. It was herring scrap, salted before the oil was expressed, 

 and packed in barrels directly from the press, each barrel containing 

 about 220 pounds. Its cost in Augusta, including freight from Pem- 

 broke via Portland, was not far from $2 per barrel. 



^Agriculture of Maine, 1869, p. 60. 

 t Agriculture of Maine, 1874-75, p. 1. 



