118 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



as much as I thought it was proper for them to eat, and hay. 

 I weighed the cattle after I got the meal out of them ; and 

 after I had fed them fourteen days with ruta-bagas, I weighed 

 them again, and you do not know what an enormous gain 

 those cattle made in the two weeks. I cannot give you the 

 figures now. Then I stopped feeding them with turnips for 

 six days, so as to get the turnip all out of them, feeding them 

 with nothing but hay. After doing that, I weighed them 

 again, so as to draw a contrast between the gain of the cattle 

 on hay and meal, and their gain on the turnips. I fed them 

 fourteen days on each ; and they filled up more, they fatted 

 faster, and they put on more flesh in the fourteen days on the 

 ruta-bagas than they did on the meal, and I fed them pretty 

 high on the meal ; they were fat cattle. It was just so with 

 all my stock, unless my lambs were an exception ; they did 

 better on ruta-bagas than on any other feed. I felt then, and 

 have felt ever since, that a crop of ruta-bagas was the most 

 valuable crop I could raise. 



Mr. French, of North Andover. Mr. Hadweu spoke of 

 feeding the leaves of his roots to cattle. I would like to 

 know whether the value of that fodder is sufficient to pay for 

 the labor of carting it from the field to the barn. I have 

 found, in feeding leaves, that although they increased the flow 

 of milk frequently, it was only for a short time, and in many 

 cases they brought on a sort of purging in the cattle. Now, 

 I want to know whether it would not be more profitable to 

 allow the leaves to remain on the land, and thus restore some 

 of the constituents that have been taken out of the soil, than 

 to use them as food for cattle. 



Mr. Hadwen. The leaves of the mangold should not be 

 fed to excess, but in moderate quantity, and in that season of 

 the year we usually feed a little hay. I have fed them to 

 milch cows to increase the flow of milk, and have experienced 

 no bad results. I have followed the practice for several 

 years, and there is no question in my own mind that it is labor 

 very profitably expended. The amount of leaves from an acre 

 of well-grown mangolds is very considerable. Mr. Hopkins 

 informs me that he took eleven tons nine hundred pounds 

 from an acre. Now, the practical question is, whether they 

 are worth saving. It is well known to those who feed cows 



