On increasing our Supplies of Animal Food. 



373 



are allowed to accumulate for months together. The trough 

 should be moveable, so as to be raised as the animal rises in his 

 lair. The advantages are, that under these circumstances none of 

 the liquid manure is lost, and the animals are dry, and clean, and 

 warm, and the air they breathe is sweet. There has been a good 

 deal of opposition to the system of box-feeding in the agricultural 

 periodicals of late ; but it certainly has been an unreasonable 

 opposition. What though the tendency of manure when it accu- 

 mulates is to ferment, and generate nauseous gases ? What though 

 these gases be injurious to animal health, and though an. ox 

 cannot lie down daily amid its own excrement without injury? — 

 All this I most readily admit; and yet the fact remains un- 

 assailed, that a box-fed ox, properly littered, will allow its litter 

 and manure to accumulate under it, and maintain notwithstanding 

 a dry and clean coat, and a healthy growth. The fact is, that 

 under his weight the manure does not ferment in any mischievous 

 degree ; the straw does not rot. The fact is, that he can choose his 

 bed; while a stall-fed animal lies where he stands whatever be 

 under him. The fact is, that the former has twice the space to 

 live in that the latter has : and the fact is, that the former lives 

 more comfortably in a warmer, drier, more healthy condition than 

 the latter. I have not the smallest hesitation in recommending* 

 box-feeding, as, ceteris paribus, the fastest method of making beef,, 

 and shed-feeding as the fastest method of making mutton. 



These, then, have been the conclusions at which we have ar- 

 rived — that box-fed or shed-fed animals of good breed, fed on 

 purchased food properly prepared, in addition to the utmost pro- 

 duce of the best-grown crops which a thorough fertile farm can 

 yield, will turn out more meat per acre, than is possible by any 

 other animals under any other circumstances. That land must 

 be raised to the highest fertility which the cost of drainage or 

 burning, or marling or liming, of manuring and cultivation, per- 

 mits — that it must then be made to yield alternately with grain 

 crops, the best descriptions of Swedish and other turnips, of man- 

 gold wurzel, of carrots, of clover, vetches, rape, or other green 

 crops, which skilful cultivation can produce, and the best crops of 

 each that cost and climate allow : that, with this produce, linseed 

 and, say, beans, must be bought (or grown) for consumption in the 

 proportion of 1 of the former, and about o of the latter, with 

 every 100 of the green food : that this, properly prepared, must 

 be given to good individuals of the Short-horn, Hereford, or Devon 

 breeds of cattle, kept in clean, well-littered boxes, or to good in- 

 dividuals of the Leicester, South Down, long-wooled, or cross-bred 

 breeds of sheep, in well-littered and well-sheltered sheds, before 

 a maximum of meat can be expected. 



IV. I have now to consider some other points, perhaps less 

 vol. x. 2 c 



