KOOTS, THEIR NUTRITIVE VALUE. 



FROM AN ESSAY READ BEFORE THE HAMPSHIRE FARMERS' INSTITUTE DY 

 H. E. STOCKBRIDGE, AT LEVERETT, FEB. 22, 1879. 



Members of the Hampshire Farmers' Institute will not expect 

 information from my own experience, concerning the best methods 

 for growing, harvesting, and storing the important root and vegetable 

 products of the farm, for most of you are better acquainted with the 

 usual and successful methods of procedure. 



I shall, therefore, briefly examine the subject by the light of a few 

 scientific facts, and endeavor to draw such practical cftnclusious as 

 are suggested. And if I devote space to the consideration of the so- 

 called root crops, to the exclusion of vegetables, it is because the 

 latter are grown principally for human coiisumptiou, to be sold from 

 the farm, and for them there is a constant demand to wliich the 

 farmer has simply to cater. While on the other hand roots are 

 generally grown for consumption on the farm, and it is of vast 

 importance that we ascertain, if possible, which of them can be most 

 profitably converted into animal tissues, and animal products, or will 

 in the greatest degree increase the power of the animal for tnking 

 nutriment from its other food. In considering the question, we must 

 first fully understand the object, or objects of root growing. Writers 

 on the subject have stated that the value of all food was solely in the 

 nutrition it contained, and have endeavored to figure out its value in 

 different articles of diet, simply from the amount of the nutritive 

 elements found in them, yet every farmer, knows that during its 

 winter confinement his stock is in an unnatural condition ; that 

 animals thrive best when fed upon green food containing more 

 than 80 per cent, of water, and that the roots given them have two 

 very important offices : First, to supply the nutrition contained in 

 themselves, and second, to keep the animal in as natural a condition 

 as possible, and thus enable it to extract more nutriment from its 

 other food. 

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