Some of the Agricultural Lessons of 1868. 
59 
"To sell slioop nt present prices is ruinous, to winter them is not mucli 
better. The following is what 1 have done and what 1 intend to do : — In the 
first place, as soon as 1 had any corn thrashed, wliich was in the first week in 
August, 1 tied iip all our fatting stock and fed them with chaff of straw, 
together with about -}t\\ part hay, giving them 8 lbs. a-picee of wheat, winter 
beans, mui/.e, and Hope's cattle food, all coarsely ground together (considering 
the mixture cheaper than oil-cake at the present prices), and 1 have just 
begun to sell them fat. I am now steaming the chaff since we have been 
cutting wheat straw, all of which we sliall use for fodder, gathering the leaves 
in the park Ibr litter. My store stock I am getting into straw-yards, giving 
them about 4 lbs. a head of oil-cake per diem with their consumption of straw. 
The ewes will winter on tlie grass with hay and peas-straw. Our feeding 
sheep are now eating mustard with hay and corn. When they have finished 1 
intend putting them tliinly on the grass and feeding more liberally. 
" The lambs I sliall lake up and place near the yard, and shall feed them 
with a very small portion of wurzel pulped and mixed with a large proportion 
of chaff, and some bran, corn, or cake. A few years ago I wintered success- 
fully 200 lambs with 3 acres of wurzel on the same jilau. 1 lay great stress 
on iDulped roots, if but few, mixed with cut chaff one day to cat the next." 
Mr. J. J. Rowley, of Derbyshire, wlio has been quoted before, 
also sends an answer to my question : — 
" My sheep are on grass ; and it ajjpears that, to el^e out the scanty crop of 
turnips, it is better to draw them from the laud (on which they are usually 
eaten) and give them a few daily on the grass jiastures, or old clovers. Hay 
stacks are becoming ' smaller by degrees,' and oat stacks are small to begin 
with. Still sheep must have food, and where the above are available there 
can be no better or cheaper plan than chopping them up together. And if to 
this mixture is added some malt-dust, bran-cake powder, or meal of any kind, 
the mixture will be much improved. Fortunately, in one sense, the maltsters 
won't buy our barley ; so that we are obliged to give it to our sheep, and in 
the absence of turnips they are doing as "well as we can expect. But this is a 
heavy loss, and shows how completely the agriculturist is at the mercy of the 
weather." 
Here, again, is a case in which a good wurzel crop came to 
the rescue of the failing turnip crop. Captain Dashwood, of 
Kirtlington, Oxon, says : — 
" I am now carrying about my usual head of stock, namely, upwards 
of 1100 sheep, 90 cattle, and 200 jrigs, besides the working horses ; and 
notwithstanding my good crop of mangold-wurzels, having but few swedes, I 
must economize my roots. The store cattle and the ewe stock will have them 
sparingly, and my cart-horses and pigs cannot be allowed any mangold. My 
forwardest tegs (Oxfordshire Downs) are now on swedes, and will be fit for 
market at Christmas — thus saving my food. In the management of my ewe 
stock for the last few years I have much economized both roots and hay. 
After the mangold crop is harvested the ewes are penned at night over the 
mangold land and pick up the leaves. Barley-straw (uncut) is placed in the 
racks, and in the morning rapc-cake is given before going out on the jiasturc 
for exercise. After the nmngold laud is folded off a few mangolds are thrown 
down on the stubbles where they are then penned at night. This season my 
ewes will be penned on swedes for only a fortnight, 'with hay given for only 
a week,' before the lambing commences; generally they are on swedes a 
month or six weeks, with the hay for the last week, before the lambing 
season." 
