252 THE SHEEP OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



breeding ewes with turnips cannot be too strongly impressed 

 upon the reader. We have no hesitation in condemning this as 

 most extravagant and unwholesome. Indeed, a good turnip 

 year in Norfolk was, in old times, invariably followed by a bad 

 lambing season. When the serious cost at which the root crop 

 is produced is taken into consideration, the folly of those who 

 persist in consuming it, not only un profitably, but prejudicially 

 to the stock, becomes strikingly apparent ; and we are persuaded 

 that the true secret of successful management is to use the 

 minimum quantity of roots with th" Tuaximum of straw, chaff, 

 <fec., adding, if necessary, a small quantity of artificial food. A 

 ewe supplied with turaips ad libitum will eat a quantity equal 

 to one-third or one-fourth of her live weight (i.e., from 201b. to 

 301b.) daily. Of this nine-tenths is water, the temperature of 

 which water in the winter is seldom many degrees above the 

 freezing point. How much of the food of the animal must be 

 burned away, so to speak, in order to raise this mass to the 

 temperature of the body ! Such unnatural feeding may be 

 comparatively harmless in fine dry weather ; but if the carcase 

 is chilled by lying on damp ground, as must often be the case, 

 then the combined effect of water outside and inside tells fatally 

 upon the fcetus, and so we have dead, potbellied, and weakly 

 lambs. Nor is this to be wondered at, considering. In 1863 

 the writer had the honour to deliver a short lecture at Hanover- 

 square on this subject, and the late Lord Berners, who was in 

 the chair, confirmed the statements made in the lecture by his 

 own experience with cattle. " I can," he said, " state that I 

 have for many years carried out what has been recommended 

 with respect to dry food both for cattle and sheep, and I have 

 found that when I reduced the quantity of turnips given to 

 bullocks and sheep, and supplied them with a certain propor- 

 tion of cut straw, they have done a great deal better than they 

 did before. An ignorant common labourer will often give his 

 bullocks as much turnips as they will eat, whatever be their 

 condition at the time. One day I found in a yard twenty or 

 thirty bullocks tied up and shivering dreadfully. I asked the 

 man in attendance what was the cause of this, and he replied, 

 * yes, they always be so after eating so many turnips.' I at 

 once ordered the quantity of turnips to be reduced, and gave 



