CONTINUOUS CROPPING ROTATIONS 189 



meadowed with a view to providing winter food, but 

 apart from the roots and hay, the main bulk of the 

 food for the dairy cows in winter has been foreign 

 food stuffs. 



The amount of money which the average farmer 

 spends on cakes and meals for dairy cows is simply 

 appalling. It is quite a common thing to meet dairy 

 farmers of, say 100 acres, whose cake bills in the year 

 would be between £400 and £500. As the writer has 

 often said in his lectures to dairy farmers, they pay 

 one rent to the landlord and two or three rents to the 

 cake merchant. 



The main object of this liberal feeding is to increase 

 the stock carrying capacity of the farm and, of course, 

 the amount of milk produced. On this point there is 

 not the slightest doubt that the farmer can obtain far 

 better results, produce more milk, by converting a 

 portion of his grass land into tillage crops, if the main 

 idea of such tillage is the production of fodder and 

 forage crops for subsequent conversion into milk. 



Much has been said of the possibilities of tillage 

 dairy farming as compared with pasture dairy farm- 

 ing. In recent years, the question which of the two 

 systems is the more economical has been the subject 

 of many debates and learned treatises by so-called 

 agricultural authorities. With the exception of one or 

 tw T o authorities, which of the two systems is the more 

 economical seems to be an open question. The writer 

 has not the slightest hesitation in saying that the till- 

 age dairy farm system is in every respect the better. 

 No man who holds the contrary view can ever have 

 seriously investigated the question, but must have 

 formed his opinion from purely theoretical estimates 

 and calculations, or else, his experience of tillage farm- 

 ing was based on the ordinary corn and root growing 

 sy&te*o of tillage, 



