

EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. 341 



began to be considered, and it was asserted that it was an excellent 

 article of food for sheep, swine, and poultry. In a communication to 

 the board of agriculture, Mr. William D. Dana, of Perry, said : 



Fish pomace, or the residuum of herring, after the oil is pressed out. is greedily 

 at.-n by sheep, swine, and fowl, and probably porgy chum would be eaten as well. 

 Smoked alewives and frost-fish also furnish a food palatable to cattle. Sheep thrive 

 well, get fat, and yield heavier fleeces when fed on this pomace than when fed on 

 anything else produced in this section of the State. Careful and observing fanners 

 who have fed it assert that it is of equal value with good hay, tou per ton, and that 

 its value for manure is in no degree diminished by passing it through the living 

 mill and thus reducing it to a much more convenient state for applying. If it could 

 be sufficiently dried, without other substances to prevent putrefaction, it would form 

 a valuable article of cattle food in regions from which it is now excluded by the 

 expense of transportation and its own odoriferous nature. 



It was thought that if sheep would eat the scrap readily much poor 

 hay or straw could be used to good advantage, thus allowing the farmer 

 to consume all his first-quality hay in keeping other stock. It was also 

 thought that the meat would not taste of the flavor imparted by this 

 food, provided other food was substituted for a reasonable and proper 

 length of time before slaughtering. 



There were many discussions on the subject at the meetings of the 

 Maine board of agriculture and articles in the agricultural papers, 

 and many experiments were made with varying degrees of satisfaction. 

 One of the most successful was that of Mr. M. L. Wilder, of Pembroke, 

 who gave the result in a paper communicated to the board of agricul- 

 ture in 1869: 



I keep about 100 sheep and have fed fish offal to them for the last ten years. The 

 offal is made from herring caught in weirs, salted the same as for smoking, cooked, 

 and the oil pressed out, leaving a pomace, for which the sheep are more eager than 

 for grain. For the last three winters I have kept my sheep on thrashed straw, with 

 one-half pound per day to each sheep of dried fish pomace, or 1 pound of green (as it 

 shrinks one-half in drying), and they came out in the spring in much better condi- 

 tion than when fed on good English hay, with corn. I consider the dry pomace worth 

 as much as corn, pound for pound. When I have had enough to give them one-half 

 pound per day, I have found that the weight of the fleeces was increased one-quarter, 

 and not only that, but also the carcass in a like proportion, the weight of the fleeces 

 per head averaging from 5 to 7 pounds. 



The conclusion to which Mr. Wilder came was that fish offal was not 

 only cheaper but much superior to any other kind of food he had ever 

 used. Similar statements were made by others. 



In 1875 the Maine Agricultural College made an experiment to test 

 the value of this offal as compared with corn, pound for pound. The 

 experiment began January 18, and ten lambs dropped the previous 

 spring were selected. The trial ran over a period of sixteen weeks. 

 AMi en the feeding commenced the pen of five sheep, to be fed on corn, 

 weighed 313 pounds, and the pen of five, to be fed on pomace, Aveighed 

 316J pounds. At the end of the trial the corn-fed pen weighed 361 

 pounds, a gain of 48 pounds ; the pomace-fed pen weighed 364 pounds, 



