Straw as Food for Stovh. 
133 
wasted. Covered yards, or more house-room, is very much required on most 
farms, for the better accommodation of cattle. There would thus he a saving 
of food, of litter, and of manure ; and a faster increase of the animals in con- 
dition by being kept both warm and dry. Every practical farmer knows 
this well; still the individual and great national loss endures from generation 
to generation." 
Mr. E. J. Bullen, Norwood Farm, Southwell, Notts, after 
alluding to the extensive employment of straw for food in his 
district, gives testimony, founded on experience, of the value of 
sparred floors, and the reader probably observed that Mr. Roynon 
said he approved of them. Mr. Bullen's statement is to the 
following effect : — 
" At a rough guess I should say that from one-fourth to one-third of the 
straw is eaten, the rest used for litter. I give it to horses and cattle, supple- 
mented by corn, turnips, and cake, according to the class of stock, as much as 
they will eat. I cut it into chaff for the horses and mix it with corn, See., in 
the manger ; for cattle I also cut it into chaff and mix with pulped roots, 
but do not let it ferment. Generally, cattle do better on straw cut into 
long chaff ; horses require it short. Last winter I used most of my straw as 
food for cattle ; as I had very little hay, the straw was cut into chaff 2 or 3 
inches long, and was mixed with pulped mangold wurtzel with more or less 
cake or other feeding stuffs. I can strongly recommend sparred floors ; I 
have tried them on a small scale and find that they answer uncommonly well. 
If sparred floors were used instead of straw-litter, and the straw thus saved used 
for fodder, cattle might be doubled in number. I should say in such a case 
it would be desirable to make less hay, but this would depend on the 
circumstances whether the hay was wanted to cut up with the straw, or 
whether roots or some other green crop were used. Mr. Jonas's system has 
not been adopted here. Pulping supplies that want, and very few farmers 
have cither the old straw to cut up, or storage room for a lot of chaff." 
Mr. G. Neale, of Newfield, Notts, says : — 
" As your queries are of great importance, I have great pleasure in answer- 
ing them. I believe two-thirds of the straw in this district are used as litter. 
We give straw to fodder the cattle in open yards, and in this way an extra- 
vagant waste takes place. The only part we utilise properly is the chaff, 
which we separate at the time of threshing, and mix it with chaffed fodder 
for horses ; we also give it to the milking-beasts, mixed with meal in a dry 
state. When using chaff or cut straw for horses, I consider it desirable to 
moisten the food with cake-water, or linseed soaked in water, and also to use a 
little bran. Cattle living partly on roots will not experience any ill effect from 
the dry food. Many farmers, where roots are plentiful, use nothing but straw 
and roots for wintering store-stock. In other circumstances, half a cake per 
beast per day is sometimes given with straw. As to the economy of litter, 
I am afraid we can find nothing to act as a perfect substitute for straw. 
What, then, can be done to make straw go further, and encourage farmers to 
make more use of it as a food instead of carting so much from the yard to the 
fields in a state of sodden litter ? My idea of the situation, and the most 
practical method I can see of utilising and economising straw, is to have 
covered-in yards, which I feel convinced, if generally adopted, would enable us 
to consume two-thirds of the straw as food ; the remainder would take the place 
of the larger proportion under the old system of open yards, and serve under 
the covered yards as litter. I have no experience about littering boxes with 
