214: 



SHEEP HUSBANDRY IN THE SOUTH. 



The great value of pea-haul m, as shown in the above Table, is worthy ot 

 the particular notice of the Southern flock-master. Also that of millet 

 straw, another crop peculiarly congenial to the Southern States, provided 

 it can be cured so that sheep will eat it. Corn-stalks are not, unfortunate- 

 ly, included in the Table. According to Petri, 100 pounds of corn " straw," 

 (including stalks and leaves, I suppose,) contains but as much nutriment 

 *s the same weight of " aromatic meadow hay," and not so much by ^ as 

 an equal weight of oat or pea straw, which he makes equivalent to each 

 other! My opinion is that this by no means indicates the comparative 

 value of well cured corn-stalks. No analysis of them now occurs to me, 

 in any authority which I have on hand. Mr. Ellsworth, of the Patent Of- 

 fice, stated in the Cultivator in 1842, that the juice of corn-stalks, on 

 Beaume's Saccharometer, is equal in saccharine matter with that of the 

 cane in this country, five times greater than that of the Northern sugar- 

 maple, (Acer saccharinum,) and three times that of beet! The daily ex- 

 periments of our farmers demonstrate the absurdity of placing corn-stalks 

 below the value of the cereal straws. Cured green and bright they are a 

 highly valuable fodder, and are relished by all herbivorous animals. My 

 friend, James M. Ellis, Esq. of Onondaga, N. Y., one of the best managing 

 flock- masters of this State, has fed corn-stalks largely to his sheep for sev- 

 eral years and with decided succes. 



EFFECT OF FOOD IN THE PRODUCTION OF WOOL. The fact has been be- 

 fore alluded to that well fed sheep produce more wool than poorly fed 

 ones. The question now arises if the effect on the condition (flesh) of the 

 sheep is the same, will one kind of food produce more wool than another 1 

 No doctrine is more clearly recognized in Agricultural Chemistry, than 

 that animal tissues derive their chemical components from the same com- 

 ponents existing in their food.* The analyses of Liebig, Johnston, Scherer, 

 Flayfair, Boeckmann, Mulder, &c., show that the chemical composition of 

 wool, hair, hoofs, nails, horns* feathers, lean meat, blood, cellular tissue, 

 nerves, &c. are nearly identical. The organic part of wool, according to 

 Johnston,t consists of carbon 50.65, hydrogen 7.03, nitrogen 17.71, oxy 

 gen and sulphur 24.61. The inorganic constituents are small. When 

 burned, it leaves but 2'0 per cent of ash. The large quantity of nitro 

 gen (17.71) contained in wool, shows that its production is increased by 

 highly azotized food. This is fully verified by the experiments made on 

 Saxon sheep, in Silesia, by Reaumur, whose Table I append. A striking 

 correspondence will be found to exist between the amount of wool and the 

 amount of nitrogen in the food. 



TABLE 18. 



* For full information on this whole subject, see Liebig's Animal Chemistry, Part I and II. 

 t See Johnston's Agricultural Chemistry Lecture XVIII. Analyses of the horny tissue*, by Scheror wil) 

 be found in the Appendix to Liebig's Animal Chemistry. 



