70 BRITISH DAIRYING. 



food than the straw of either wheat, barley, or rye, and the oats 

 themselves form a valuable item in the list of corn consumed 

 on the holding. The consumption of home-grown corn on a 

 farm deserves encouragement by being admitted for compensa- 

 tion on the same basis as purchased corn. Why not, indeed? 

 A farmer now may sell his home-grown grain, buy other corn 

 or cake with the money, and be entitled to compensation for 

 what he buys if he leaves his farm ; why, therefore, not en- 

 courage the consumption of home-grown grain by serving all 

 alike? 



Oat straw, and wheat straw too, for the matter ot that, 

 may be greatly improved as food for stock by being chaffed 

 along with about 5 per cent, of green and succulent tares or 

 rye, and well trodden down in a bin or silo, a bushel of salt 

 being scattered amongst each ton of chaff. Straw-chaff treated 

 in this way and left for six months has undergone a slight and 

 slow fermentation which has made it compare very favourably 

 with unprepared straw. The late Dr. Voelcker found it con- 

 tained two and a half times the percentage of sugar, gum, &c >5 

 and was one-fourth richer in materials which produce the lean 

 fibre of meat or of muscle ; the percentage of soluble vegetable 

 fibre was nearly twice as great, and the fermentation rendered 

 the hard, dry substance of the straw more easily soluble and 

 digestible than it would otherwise have been ; the prepared straw- 

 chaff had the agreeable smell of good green meadow hay, and an 

 infusion of it yielded a liquid hardly distinguishable from " hay 

 tea." Two hundredweight of decorticated cotton-seed meal 

 added to a ton of the chaff raised it to the quality of good 

 meadow hay. 



In order to treat straw in this way the farmer must needs 

 have part of a winter's supply beforehand, and chaff it in the 

 spring or summer. The advantage of having a lot of pre- 

 pared chaff of this sort will be obvious to those who are in 

 the habit of pulping roots and mixing the pulp with chaff. 



Unprepared oat straw has been found to be much more 

 relished by stock if it were well wetted with water and left to 

 soak for twenty-four hours. The softening renders it easier to 



