204 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



grass-fed beef, nor poor hay-fed stock. If any reliance can be 

 placed on Boussingault's table of nutritive equivalents, 100 

 pounds of good English hay are equal, in feeding qualities, to 

 65 pounds of barley, 60 pounds of oats, 58 pounds of rye, 55 

 pounds of wheat, 70 pounds of corn, 382 pounds of carrots, 319 

 pounds of potatoes, or 676 pounds of Swedish turnips. Other 

 chemists make these equivalents a little different, but all make 

 the relative value of hay higher than most Yankees would guess 

 or most farmers would calculate, without making accurate ex- 

 periments. We must, however, remember that the hay with 

 which these grains and roots are compared is good English hay, 

 not the rough scurf of our meadows, composed of daisies, this- 

 tles, and other weeds, with a few spires of grass thrown in for 

 seasoning, and the whole allowed to stand on the sod till most 

 of the nutriment has gone to the formation of seed, that has 

 been scattered by the birds and winds to the four corners of 

 the earth. It is because much of the hay which we feed to our 

 stock is of so poor a quality that we estimate its nutritive value 

 at so low a rate. Practical farmers who have carefully experi- 

 mented in feeding good hay, grain and roots, do not differ 

 materially in their conclusions from the analyses of scientific 

 chemists. Thaer, from his experiments, estimates 100 pounds 

 of hay as equivalent to 76 pounds barley, 86 pounds oats, 71 

 pounds rye, 300 pounds carrots, or 460 pounds mangold 

 wurzel. The grains, it will be noticed, rank lower in the 

 practical experiment than in the chemical analysis. From 

 both experiment and analysis we conclude that a hundred 

 pounds of hay is equivalent in nutrition to one bushel of corn 

 or barley, two bushels of oats, four bushels of potatoes, or 

 five bushels of carrots. As there can be no question but that 

 we can raise a hundred pounds of hay at less expense than a 

 bushel of corn or five bushels of carrots, it follows that hay 

 should be the leading crop, where crops are raised to be fed 

 out to stock. 



We know that in comparing substances so unlike as hay and 

 roots there is some uncertainty, especially in the analytical 

 comparison. It is too much like comparing chalk and cheese. 

 Tliere may be some homoeopathic dose of medicine in the car- 

 rots so minute as to escape the chemist's test. We would, 

 therefore, by no means condemn the roots. We raise them, 



