Experiments in Fattening Cattle. 



123 



that the feeding cattle are comfortably housed, and regularly and 

 carefully fed, and that their food is not giyen to them in wasteful 

 abundance. In many published reports of experiments in cattle- 

 feeding, the weight of roots said to be given to each animal daily 

 is in most cases double, and in some cases treble the quantity which 

 we find sufficient. This may be partly caused by the greater ap- 

 petite of a larger breed of cattle, partly by allowing the animals to 

 eat a much larger bulk of turnips than their digestive organs can 

 turn to good account, and partly by permitting the animal to waste 

 much of his food in unnecessary exercise or exposure to cold. 



With an annual experience in fattening upwards of 250 cattle 

 in stalls and boxes, we find that from 80 lbs. to 100 lbs. of cut 

 swedes per dav given in two feeds, morning and afternoon, and a 

 cooked feed at noon, as described in experiment No. 6, is quite 

 sufficient to fatten cattle of from 40 to 50 stones imperial. The 

 substitution of the cooked midday feed for one-third of the 

 former allowance of turnips, has enabled us to increase our fatten- 

 ing cattle by one-third in number, leaving a proportionately larger 

 return per acre for turnips consumed, and a greater increase of 

 valuable manure. Economy in feeding is the great secret of suc- 

 cess in making the turnip-crop pay ; a certain effect must not only 

 be produced in a given time, but it must be produced at the 

 cheapest cost. As yet we have found nothing equally nutritive 

 and so cheap as 2 feeds of raw swedes per day and 4 lbs. of bean- 

 meal, cooked Avith an equal weight of cut straw, given as the mid- 

 day feed. 



V. — On the Power of Soils to absorb Manure. By J. Thomas 

 Way, Consulting Chemist to the Society. (Second Paper.) 



In the Midsummer number of the Society's Journal for the year 

 1850,* I published a paper " On the Power of Soils to absorb 

 Manure," the object of which was, to bring before the Members 

 of the Society some interesting experiments that bad been recently 

 made by myself and others in reference to the important question 

 of the action of manures on the soil, and to show the existence of 

 a property in soils, which until that time had not been recognised. 



The experiments described in that paper were abundantly 

 sufficient to establish the fact of this new property of soils ; they 

 even went so far as to show to what it was not to be attributed ; 

 but although limiting the possible explanations of the results in 

 question to a comparatively small compass, they were insufficient 



* Vol. ix., Pa-t 1. 



