Straw as Food for Stosi. 
123 
made by fat or well-fed cattle, will be equal to two or three of 
it. The proper food for cows in winter is cut chaff — one-half 
straw and the other half hay, with a good boil of turnips and 
cabbages ; for young cattle the same chaff, and as much cabbage 
as they will eat ; and the same, or turnips, for black cattle." 
Probably many of the readers of this Journal will be sur- 
prised to hear that the comparative worthlessness of mere rotted 
straw as manure was inculcated so early in the century. As 
lor the penny-wise pound-foolish custom of feeding in-calf cows 
exclusively on straw in the winter months, there are scores of 
farmers in the dairy districts who still scrupulously adhere to 
it, and are consequently not only grievously behind their age, 
but are deficient of the wisdom which was imparted to the world 
seventy-three years ago, notwithstanding all the practical and 
scientific aids which have been brought to bear on our feeding 
systems in recent times. By bestowing 5 lbs. per head per day 
of cotton-cake on cattle in the strawyard, neither hay, cabbages, 
nor turnips are necessary. Both in-calvers and young cattle 
will thrive, and fully support their flesh-condition on this 
(juantity of cake, in addition to the straw diet ; and the evil 
of an impoverished dungheap need not be apprehended. When 
such important benefits accrue from the expenditure of less 
than half-a-crown per beast per week in the cost of the cake, it 
does seem strange that owners of stock should be found at the 
present day so blind to their own interests as to keep them in 
a state of semi-starvation, by restricting their diet exclusively 
to straw-fodder. 
But such a policy is scarcely more reprehensible than that of 
determining to have nothing whatever to do with straw in 
dieting animals. One of the gentlemen to whom I applied for 
information, as to the extent that straw is utilised as food for 
stock in his locality, has been good enough to state his opinion, 
that it is employed " a great deal too much," being, according 
to his ideas, " the most extravagant food used." Answering the 
question, in what way straw should be given to stock, " Not 
at all," he said ; and in reference to the system of the late 
Mr. Samuel Jonas for making straw-chaff more palatable and 
better, by causing it to ferment with small quantities of green 
chaff, he has written : " I think it all moonshine." 
How different is the reply of Mr. John Coleman, of Riccall 
Hall, York, to my queries. Speaking of his own district, he 
says :— 
"As a rule, most of the straw is used for litter, but there are exceptional 
eases where the largest part of the straw grown on the farm is passed through 
the animal's body, and I am interested in one case where nearly all is thus 
used, straw for litter being bought. This is at Lord Wenlock's home-farm 
