740 UTILIZATION OF FOREST HERBAGE FOR FODDER. 



Young cattle are always more harmful to the forest than 

 older beasts ; even calves form no exception to this rule, 

 nibbling woody plants partly out of playfulness, partly to 

 assist dentition. Whilst a flock of full-grown sheep may be 

 driven without much danger through a beech or spruce 

 reproduction-area well stocked with grass, as is sometimes 

 done in the Harz, this can never be the case with lambs. 



It is evidently necessary to base the number of cattle 

 admitted to graze in a forest on the amount of available 

 fodder it contains. Very many Alpine forests, for 'instance, 

 have suffered greatly from an excess in the number of cattle 

 admitted into them by grazing-rights. As a rule, the require- 

 ments of fodder per head are proportional to the weight of the 

 beasts ; thus, a cow of average size, weighing 200 kilos 

 (4 cwt.), requires daily for its complete nourishment 7 to 8 

 kilos (15 to 18 Ibs.) of hay ; if, as Hundeshagen calculates, for 

 every cwt. 1/8 to 2 kilos (4 to 4J Ibs.) of fodder are necessary. 

 If calves are reckoned at two-thirds and sheep at one-tenth 

 the weight of a full-grown cow, 5 kilos (11 Ibs.) of hay are 

 required for a calf ; and f kilo (If Ibs.) for a sheep. It is 

 impossible to say what is the average yield of fodder in forests 

 open to grazing, but grass, equivalent to 700 to 900 kilos of 

 hay per hectare (5J to 7 cwt. per acre), may be cited, as the 

 supply in good localities. 



3. National-economic importance of Forest Pasture. 



The gain to agriculture through forest pasture, from the 

 large quantities of grass and other herbage which forests 

 annually produce, and from the maintenance and exercise of 

 the beasts in the open air, is too self-evident to be controverted. 

 On the other hand, the supply of manure is diminished con- 

 siderably, and whenever, as now almost everywhere, the latter 

 is the turning-point of agricultural profit, forest pasture is 

 clearly a hindrance to agricultural success. The more 

 unfavourable, however, the agricultural conditions, and the 

 more the farmer is compelled to use all available means in 

 order to be able to feed his cattle at least through the winter, 

 the greater value does he attach to forest psist.uro. .Forest 



