126 
Straw as Food for Stock. 
wether lambs having not the slightest green food from November 
until towards the end of April, beyond what little they could 
pick up from the stubbles ; yet they did remarkably well on 
straw-chaff, bruised oats, and meal, and were sold in May for 
nearly three times the amount they had cost before winter. 
Mr. Coleman has written that flockmasters were taught a lesson 
then, which they will never forget ; but it has been repeated 
more than once since. The droughty summers of 1868 and 1870, 
although not equally fatal to the turnip crop, left the supply of 
roots and hay remarkably short for the succeeding winters, and a 
very general recourse to straw was again made in those seasons. 
The experience, therefore, already obtained is ample to prove 
not only the practicability of keeping sheep on a winter diet, 
the bulk of which is straw-chaff, if only a due proportion of highly 
nutritious food, such as oilcake, meal, grain, or treacle, be used 
with it ; but that sheep will thrive better and be more healthy 
on such a mixed dietary than any other. The only obstacle to 
its being more generally adopted in all winters is the expense 
and labour involved. Farmers, somehow, do not take kindly to 
the system when turnips and other roots are abundant. To 
carry it out under these circumstances would require their flocks 
to be greatly enlarged, and, apart from the question of capital, 
store stock, as a rule, rises in price whenever keep is abundant, 
rendering speculative purchases, especially for artificial products, 
extremely hazardous. There are the turnips, and they require 
to be eaten, or they will have to be ploughed in for manure : 
and it is natural that the farmer having a good crop of roots 
on his land, and a limited number of mouths to eat them, should 
feed his animals almost entirely on root-pulp, unless, indeed, 
their health would be thereby placed in jeopardy. 
For ewes heavy in lamb, however, a full supply of turnips, 
with no dry food of any sort as a healthful alterative, must be 
extremely injudicious and hazardous. The laws of physiology 
do not condemn the custom, of allowing ewes in lamb to live 
entirely on turnips, more than the practical experience of flock- 
masters themselves. Sad losses, indeed, have accrued from perse- 
verance in the system, and yet some farmers are so hard to turn 
out of old ruts that, in various parts of the kingdom, it still 
holds sway ; while in others, and particularly the South- Western 
Counties, immense quantities of hay are given to ewes before 
lambing. As Mr. Coleman intimates, it would he well if such 
sheep, when they must have turnips, were always allowed free 
access to good wholesome straw ; their shepherds would be 
astounded at the large quantities they would devour of their 
own free will. This is already done in Scotland to a great 
extent, and on all large English sheep-farms it appears to be a 
