484 Oil Box-feeding with Linseed Compounds. 



difficult in the preparation of the compounds or in the mode of 

 feeding the cattle. The whole is quite simple, and will be easy 

 to manage when once understood. The amount of labour like- 

 wise is less than might be inferred, from reading the directions, the 

 minuteness of which make them appear rather burthensome : but 

 method and regularity are, in truth, the chief requisites ; in proof 

 of which, it need only be mentioned, that the cattle-boxes at 

 Trimingham are in the charge of an elderly man, with the assist- 

 ance of a boy. The man is blind, but he has acquired a perfect 

 knowledge of every beast, and can tell by handling the progress 

 each is making ; he moves about the passages from one box to 

 another without being ever at a loss, and the animals know him 

 and come to him and solicit his attention, showing how perfectly 

 they are become domesticated by kind treatment. 



The grass-compound was being used when I visited Triming- 

 ham ; the grass having been cut and carted home in the usual 

 manner, and deposited in the forage-house. It is there cut by the 

 blind man just mentioned, who worked the chaff-cutting machine 

 very expeditiously, and cut a considerable quantity whilst I was 

 present. When thus cut, the grass is compounded with the 

 linseed-mucilage in the way I have described, and I saw the 

 catde eating it with great avidity. The addition now and then of 

 a little salt to the compound, or placing a piece of rock-salt or a 

 piece of chalk in the crib occasionally for the animals to lick, 

 would, I think, be found useful as a stimulant and corrective, and 

 benefit the health of the animals. At any rate it might be tried. 



The foregoing explanations will, it is hoped, be sufficient for 

 enabling the reader to understand the objects as well as the 

 several details of box- feeding, which may be adopted by any 

 farmer, however limited his means, if he begins in a small way at 

 first, increasing the number of his boxes and other appliances as 

 success enables him to advance. Wherever the landlord affords 

 encouragement, by furnishing materials and assisting in the con- 

 struction of the requisite buildings, all difficulties will at once be 

 overcome ; and there is, I believe, no way in which the landlord 

 could more effectually assist his tenant, than by encouraging and 

 enabling him to adopt a system of box-feeding, coupled with the 

 cultivation of flax for the seed and fibre. 



It may perhaps be questioned, whether boxes of the form 

 described are really essential parts of the system, and whether 

 the cattle cannot be fattened with the linseed-compounds in the 

 fold-yard, or in sheds or stalls of the usual form, as well as in 

 boxes ;* whether, in short, the boxes, although valuable as 



* The results of my experience are, that cattle fatten equally well in 

 stalls and boxes ; that in stalls they take up less room, and require less 



