SECRETARY'S REPORT. 191 



The average weight of heifer calves at 3 months is 233 lbs. Bulls, 353 \hs. 

 " " " 6 " 357 " " 472 *' 



" « " 1 year 640 " " 750 " 



«' « « 2 " " 1,180 " «" 1,300 " 



The daily increase of a heifer calf is 1.5 lbs. Of a bull calf, 1.8 lbs. 



" " " in the 2d year is 1.4. Of a bull, 1.5 lbs. 



Few animals are fattened except working oxen, and now and 

 then a cow that goes dry. At the commencement of winter, 

 when the work is over, about twelve oxen are usually fed for 

 beef. The process never exceeds four months. The oxen 

 receive daily, 10 lbs. of hay, 6 lbs. of straw, 25 lbs. of beets, 45 

 lbs. of beer-malt, 4 lbs. of oil-cake ; in all 6Q lbs. of hay or its 

 equivalent, and 6 lbs. of straw for litter, a day. The average 

 time of feeding for the last four years was one hundred and 

 twenty-three and a half days. The increase per head in this 

 time was three hundred and two and three-quarters pounds, or 

 two and one-half pounds a day on an average, live weight. For 

 each one hundred pounds of hay, or its equivalent, fed out, the 

 animal took on 3.64 pounds live weight. 



From what has been said it will be seen that all the feed of 

 stock, the dry and green forage, straw, &c., is cut, mixed or 

 macerated. This is the case, with very few exceptions, all over 

 Germany. 



The Sheep. — Hohenheim undertook to improve the sheep of 

 the country by breeding and furnishing suitable bucks. The 

 object was a breed tolerably rich in wool and size of body, 

 hardihood and capacity for supporting themselves on mountain 

 pastures in summer, and dry pastures and the sheepfolds in 

 winter. These qualities it was difficult to find in any known 

 breed, and to get one was the problem to be solved. Very fine 

 woolled sheep, and sheep eminently adapted to mutton, were 

 the exceptions, and did not sufficiently unite all these qualities. 

 The characteristic sheep of the country is a wool-mutton sheep, 

 got from a cross of the Merino with the German sheep with a 

 live weight of 90 to 100 lbs, and a clip of 3 lbs. of No. 2 to No. 

 4 wool, which had the character partly of a cloth and partly of 

 a combing wool. 



The fat bucks of this so-called grade sheep, which exhibited 

 different degrees of improvement, yet having attained such 

 similarity and fixedness of type as to be designated abroad as 



