174 THE COMPLETE GRAZIER. BOOK i. 



that the hay made from grass mowed after the cattle, is usually 

 employed for feeding live stock at the beginning of winter, the best 

 being reserved for the spring ; and where a few pounds of salt have 

 been thrown over each load, when stacked, it is grateful to cattle, so that 

 they have been known to prefer poor hay salted to good hay untouched. 

 Salt acts as a condiment ; it assists digestion ; and evidently is eaten 

 with avidity by most ruminating animals. In recent wet seasons a large 

 quantity of hay was obtained in such bad order that many modes were 

 suggested by which it could be made more valuable for feeding pur- 

 poses. In " Bell's Weekly Messenger " Mr. Bowick suggested : 



Fenugreek (powdered) 112 Ib. 



Pimento . . v 4 > 



Aniseed . . . 4 ,, 



Caraway . . . 4 ,, 



Cumin . 2 ,, 



These to be mixed, and the mixture strewed on the hay in layers, as 

 it is built in the stack. Mr. Bowick does not offer this as the best to 

 be made, but he gives it with confidence as a safe, reliable, and valuable 

 compound for the purpose indicated. 



The most luxuriant of all vegetable productions, perhaps, is the 

 cabbage with its numerous varieties, which, when combined with cut 

 pea- or oat-straw, has been found singularly useful as winter fodder for 

 store stock ; and which, with the addition of good hay, will fatten oxen 

 or bullocks rapidly, besides yielding a larger quantity of manure than 

 almost any other material used for winter feed. 



Dr. Voelcker says that no green food cultivated on the large scale 

 contains so much nutritious matter as cabbages. Cattle, moreover, are 

 very fond of them ; and for calving cows they are specially valuable, as 

 they increase the flow of milk. 



Kohl Rabi has steadily gown in favour as a feeding material, especially 

 for milch cows. This root is more nutritious than white turnips, and 

 "fully equal if not superior/' saj T s Dr. Voelcker, "to swedes and 

 mangel. . . I may remark, with respect to the kohl rabi, that it is an 

 excellent food for milch cows, inasmuch as it produces rich and good 

 milk : the butter made of such milk has a pleasant taste, altogether 

 unlike the disagreeable flavour that characterises butter made from the 

 milk of cows fed upon turnips." 



The late Professor Baldwin, Inspector of the Agricultural Schools 

 in Ireland, who wrote so many papers of value on farming subjects, 

 experimented extensively on the feeding value of kohl rabi, and detailed 

 the results in the " Irish Farmer's Gazette." These do not show the 

 high value which some put upon this crop. The cattle did not like the 

 stems, and Mr. Baldwin concluded that, weight for. weight, swedes were 

 superior to them. Moreover, upon the farm land upon which the two 

 crops were sown, the swedes yielded 25 tons, the kohl rabi only 13 tons 

 per acre. 



Parsnips have been employed not only for feeding store cattle, but 

 particularly for fattening oxen, which eat them most advantageously ; 

 the benefit thence derived being, in the estimation of some graziers, 



