St?-aiv as Food for Stock. 
1 11 
restrictions that may fetter our selling and buying, as the merits of each case 
may dictate to us." 
The Aylesbury Vale furnishes the following as the experience 
of one of its farm occupiers : — 
" Straw is generally used as litter, this being more of a grazing and dairying 
district than a farming one; but I myself, having 100 or 170 acres of arable 
land, out of a 500-acre farm, generally cut up a good deal of straw. I use 
straw for horses in chaff consisting of about three-fourths straw, one-fourth 
hay, no long hay or straw being given. For beasts I vary according to 
circumstances. In a good year of hay, perhaps I give one-fourth straw 
to dairy-cows, and nearly one-half straw to dry stock. I do not use straw- 
chaff for sheep. In a short season of hay I give probably one-half straw to 
dairy-cows, and three-fourths straw to dry beasts, always mixed with 
pulped mangold or swedes, generally mangold ; cake is used and varied 
according to circumstances. I always use the food fresh mixed. In a plentiful 
hay season I do not always use it as chaff, but give the dairy beasts the hay 
whole, and the young beasts whole straw and roots, or 3 or 4 lbs. of cake, 
which I prefer with the whole straw. No doubt more cattle can be kept by 
using chaff and pulped roots, as I myself, I should think, keep twenty or thirty 
more beasts through the year since I have adopted the system I now yearly 
pursue — mowing less and grazing more — but the increased price of labour 
makes it a question with me whether it now pays ; but this year I shall be 
compelled, through the shortness of hay, to cut up everything I can." 
Nothing can possibly show the variability of custom and 
opinion on the straw question than the fact that, whereas the 
last statement gave as a reason for straw being chiefly used for 
litter in the Vale of Aylesbury, the circumstance of its being 
a dairy and grazing district, the following, posted to me from 
Shaftesbury, points to dairy-farms as the very places where straw 
ought to be used as food. The writer says : — 
" On well-managed dairy-farms as little straw as possible is used for litter, 
all the wheat- and oat-straw, except what is used for thatching, being fed, and 
even some bought for the purpose. But some farmers do not make the most 
of it by any means, and of course are obliged to do with less stock in con- 
sequence. I always put wheat- or oat-straw chaff with corn for horses, but 
never any whole ; but I keep cows before calving on either wheat- or oat-straw, 
or barley if it has clover init, whole, giving a little cake, about 4 lbs., once a 
day. After calving, I give generally straw- and hay-chaff, with linseed and 
rice-meal, twice a day, and hay besides. I prefer cows before calving to eat straw 
whole, as it saves labour, but afterwards I advocate giving chaff mixed with some 
kind of meal. A neighbouring farmer chaffed the whole of his hay and straw, 
giving the cows nothing but chaff mixed with meal during last winter, and 
they did exceedingly well. If cattle are littered with cut straw, the manure 
will, of course, drill after getting rotten ; but I do not approve of using much 
straw for litter if it is fit for feeding. I prefer sparred floors or perforated bricks, 
which greatly economise straw ; but, of course, some straw is occasionally abso- 
lutely necessary. If straw were more extensively employed as food, I think 
cattle might be increased ten to the 100 acres, and in some cases certainly 
kss hay might be made were straw used for feeding as much as it ought 
to be." 
Mr. F. Sowerby, of Aylesby, Grimsby, appears to be of 
