AND RURAL ECONOMIST. 



223 



young better than they would if fed altogether on food of a 

 less substantial nature. 



' When several kinds of food can be procured, it is right 

 to give them alternately to ihe sheep at different meals, m 

 the course of the same day ; the qualities of one kind aid or 

 compensate those of another. At certain hours of the day, 

 dry fodder should be given, and, at others, roots or grain. 

 If there be any danger that the roots may decay, the winter 

 should be begun with them, mixing, however, some dry food 

 with them, for alone they would not be sufficiently nutri- 

 tious. '=^ 



Writers do not agree on the quantity of food which a 

 given number of sheep will consume to advantage in a given 

 time. Probably, it would be very difficult to lay do.vn any 

 rules on the subject which would not be subject to very 

 nearly as many excepiions as coincidences. Some seasons 

 would require more food than others for the same sheep ; 

 the same number of sheep of different sizes, ages, sexes, and 

 breeds, would also consume different quantities of food of 

 the same quality. When we add to these causes of error 

 the consideration that food of the same kind is often very 

 different in quality, — one ton of clover hay, for example, 

 mowed at the right period of- its growth, and well made and 

 housed, may be worth two tons of the same sort of hay 

 grown and made under different circumstances — nothing, 

 therefore, can be hoped for in this inquiry, except some ap- 

 proximation to truth. We may, however, perhaps provide 

 ourselves with materials for the exercise of those qualities 

 for guessing, for which New England people are celebrated. 

 When a man is laying in fodder for his sheep or neat cattle, 

 it may be of great consequence to be able to form a con- 

 jecture approximating the truth, relative to the quantity 

 and quality of provisions for that purpose which it may be 

 expedient to accumulate. 



Mr. Lawrence says, ' sheep will eat, on an average, twenty 

 pounds of turnips each in twenty-four hours. An acre of 

 good turnips in the field, between November and March, 

 will keep one hundred sheep six weeks. One gallon of raw 

 potatoes will suffice a sheep twenty-four hours, but some 

 will eat much more. Fourteen hundred sheep will eat up 

 and spoil an acre of good turnips in a night. Of the quan- 

 tities of hay and corn [grain] which a sheep will consume 



* Tessier's Treatise oa Sheep. 



