154-The 'Book of the Goat. 



garden produce, as neither hay nor roots would come to 

 as much as is here set down. 



Storing Food for Winter Use. 



Goats are very fond of all kinds of dried fodder, and 

 there are numerous articles which in summer are plentiful 

 enough, and may be utilised in winter if collected and 

 dried during hot weather and then stored. Indeed, many 

 goats prefer the dried food to the same articles in a fresh 

 condition. This plan is largely adopted on the Continent, 

 and the mode adopted is well described by a writer as 

 follows : 



" Keep your garden trimmings, your tree, and bush, and 

 hedge loppings from the rubbish-heap while the leaves 

 are yet unturned, and lay them on sheets or flags in the 

 midday hours to dry thoroughly on the stalks and boughs, 

 during which time they must be well watched, and no 

 intervals of damping allowed. Throw them under a roof 

 at night, and out again when the dew is off; then store 

 them up lightly on poles laid across the roof -beams of a 

 barn or other outbuilding, or suspend them in bunches, like 

 pea-stick faggots, from the beams themselves. In this 

 way vine-clippings, the prunings of fruit-bushes, thorn- 

 hedges, rose-trees, and even herbaceous plants, as chrysan- 

 themums, &c., may become a winter store, and by the suc- 

 culency they retain permit the introduction of more straw 

 into the chaff of a dear winter. ' ' * 



In regard to this kind of food I may remark that when 

 goats are allowed to wander about in a yard as a means 

 of exercise, it is a very good plan to obtain all the loppings 

 of trees you can get, and to throw them down for the 

 animals to peel off the bark. There is scarcely any food 

 that a goat takes to like this, and I cannot doubt that it 

 is highly beneficial for it. 



