554 Notes on Feeding Stuffs for September. TSept., 



NOTES ON FEEDING STUFFS 

 FOR SEPTEMBER. 



E. T. Halnan, M.A., Dip. Agric. (Cantab.). 

 Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. 



If the experience of past dry years repeats itself, the break 

 in the dry weather will be followed by a luxuriant lushy growth 

 of grass in the pastures, and the cattle will show a tendency to 

 scour. This tendency can be corrected by the addition of a little 

 cotton cake. 



Oats have been an extraordinarily cheap feeding Qtnf!, so much 

 so that they have compared favourably with other concentrated 

 feeding stuffs, and it has paid the farmer to buy in oats as a feed 

 for his stock in preference to other feeding stuffs. It may be 

 of interest here to emphasise the fact that, when conditions of 

 price allow its use, a mixture of oats and linseed cake, half-and- 

 half, forms one of the best feeds for the production of milk of 

 which the writer is aware. 



Home-grown Feeding Stuffs: the Future. — The unfavourable 

 climatic conditions of this season will almost certainly result ir 

 a general shortage of home-grown food for stock in the spring 

 and early summer of 1922. The hay crop has been got in under 

 very favourable conditions, and has resulted in a light but very 

 good quality hay. In some districts straw is also short, and 

 owing to the dry weather, roots are also likely to be short except 

 on a few well-favoured farms. In order to compensate for this 

 possible shortage of food, it will be wise to reserve a break for 

 the growth of a forage crop to come into use at the time that the 

 question of feed will most likely be a problem. A vetches and 

 oats mixture and winter cabbages may be suggested as suitable 

 crops for this purpose. 



Sweet Clover as a Forage Crop. — The attention of the writer 



has been called to the value of sweet clover (Melilotus alha) as a 

 forage crop. In England its use has hitherto been confined to 

 ploughing in as a green manure, but Canadian experience has 

 established it firmly as an efficient substitute for clover in the 

 rotation. In feeding value it is approximately equal to clover, 

 and since it yields 5 tons of hay to the acre, it is too valuable a 



