By-Products 167 
With dairy cattle the quantity of tops fed should be 
much smaller than with beef, because the former should 
have more concentrates and less bulky feed. Fed in 
moderate quantities, equaling about one-third of the total 
ration, the silage increases the yield of milk; but with 
unlimited access to the tops, cows do not maintain their 
milk flow. Each acre of beets should furnish from one 
hundred fifty to two hundred days’ feed for an ordinary 
dairy animal. About the same quantity of siloed tops 
may be used as of corn silage. 
Sheep do well on beet tops, but care must be taken 
that they eat only moderate quantities at first. Because 
of the desirable flavor and color of their flesh, sheep fed 
on beet tops are in great demand. Pasturing sheep on 
the tops is perhaps the most common practice, but it is 
dangerous not only because of the scouring effect of large 
quantities of tops on the animals but also because sheep 
tend to pack the soil, and thereby to destroy its tilth, par- 
ticularly if the land is wet. Sheep are usually fattened 
on beet by-products during the winter, and it is more de- 
sirable that the tops be siloed than pastured or fed dry, 
since the silage is always warm and convenient to handle 
in winter. Satisfactory, rapid, and economical gains 
have been realized from feeding three to four pounds of 
beet-top silage a day together with a lessened quantity 
of hay or other supplementary feeds. 
If the land is not so wet that it causes the soil to pack, 
either sheep or hogs may be pastured on the remaining 
tops after the siloing or stacking has been done. Con- 
siderable feed is left in the form of undug beets and 
scattered tops that these animals relish. Since pork 
