28 ON STALL-FEEDING COWS. 



any arguments I may offer, to place it before you in the 

 clearest point of view, and remove from your minds every 

 doubt whatever upon the subject. 



To draw the necessary proof, therefore, from what comes 

 under your own observation (I may say, every day of your 

 lives, and which must, therefore, have more weight with jou 

 than anything- else I could say), I refer you with confidence 

 to the exhausted miserable pasture upon which yoiu* cattle 

 are now almost universally fed, two or three acres of which 

 are often barely sufficient to keep one cow alive for the 

 summer months, but by no means to afford her a sufficiency 

 of food. Now one acre of g'ood clover and rye-g'rass, one 

 rood of vetches, and three roods of turnips (making" up in all 

 two acres, which are now allotted for grazing- one cow in 

 summer), taking a stolen crop of rape after the vetches, ivill 

 afford ample provision for three cows the year round. For 

 you all know that an acre of good clover will house-feed 

 three cows from the middle of May to the middle of October; 

 and, with the help of a rood of vetches, you will be able to 

 save half the first cutting for hay to use during the winter. 

 Then, when the first fi-osts, about the middle of October, 

 may have stripped the clover of its leaves, the early sown 

 rape, which ought to be put in ridge by ridge as the vetches 

 are cut, and the land well manured (if the seed has been 

 sown by the middle of July),' will be ready to cut and feed 

 the cattle until the turnips are ripe. Here then you have 

 plainly provision secured until towards the middle of No- 

 vember ; and we have to calculate what remains to feed the 

 cattle until the middle of the May following-. For this pur- 

 pose there is a rood of turnips for each cow. Now, an acre 

 of the white globe and j-ellow Aberdeen turnip ought to 

 produce from 35 to 40 tons per acre ; but supposing one-half 

 to be of the Swedish kind, let us calculate only on 28 tons 

 to the acre, which is not more than an average produce, even 

 if they were all Swedish, and see what tbat calculation will 

 yield per day for 190 days, which is rather more than the six 

 months. If an acre yields 28 tons, a rood will yield 7 tons, 

 which, being brought into pounds, will amount to 15,680 

 pounds, and this, divided by 190 days, will leave 83 pounds 

 of turnips for each cow every da}^, which, with a small por- 

 tion of the hay and straw you are possessed of, is a very 

 sufficient allowance for a common-sized milch cow ; and, 

 over and above all this, you have the second growth of the 

 rood of rape coming forward in March and April, which 



