452 Practical Experiences in the Preparation of Food for Stoch. 
[For Schedule of Questions, see page 448.] 
Mr. Thomas Jennings — continued. 
13. (a) Chaffed food, or " lick," as it is termed here, causes both milk 
and butter to be sweeter and of better quality, and free from taste of turnips. 
(6) It is very useful, as it qualifies to a considerable extent the other foods 
given, and causes the animals to make beef more rapidly. 
Professor J. P. Sheldon, Sheen, Ashbourne, Derbyshire. 
3. On my father's farm we used a large quantity of oat straw as food for 
cattle, and a little for sheep, in the winter months. One way of using it was 
to chaff it, mix pulped turnips with it — enough of the pulp to thoroughly 
moisten it — and also some kind or other of meal that was cheapest and best ; 
the chaff, after mixing, lay in a heap for twenty-four hours or so, during which 
time it grew warm, and the straw was thoroughly softened. Another way, 
chiefly with yearlings and stirks, was to put the straw out-of-doors for a few 
days, either to be rained on or to have water thrown on it ; in this way it 
was thoroughly softened, and the labour of digesting it was correspondingly 
diminished. Cake and turnips were also fed to young cattle eating the straw 
— the cake broken and the turnips sliced — and they always grew remarkably 
well. 
4. I hold to the belief that litter, generally speaking, is a superfluity and 
a waste, though I am aware that it is commonly used for horses, cattle, and 
pigs. I know from experience that pigs do not need it, if only they have 
boards to lie on ; the same is just as perfectly true in reference to horses, if 
their stalls are well planned and drained. For my cows of all ages I have 
never used any litter at all ; the stalls are smoothly paved with freestone, 
and there is no need whatever for litter. 
6. I do not think all the straw ought to be chafl^ed. One feed a day, at 
all events, ought to consist of unchaffed straw — of straw that has beforehand 
been well soaked with water. 
6. I seldom chaff hay except for my horses. I find that my cattle do 
very well with it unchaffed ; and I have made some very good beef from 
cake and unchaffed hay. At other times I have given to fattening cattle 
one or two feeds a day of chaffed hay, with which one or more kinds of meal 
have been mixed. Cattle ruminate all the better if they eat unchaffed hay; 
they eat chopped hay too greedily as a rule. In any case it shoidd be chaffed 
in inch or three-quarter-inch length, in order that it may demand mastica- 
tion. 
7. Whatever gain there is in using chaffed instead of unchaffed straw 
and hay consists, first, in the facility it lends to the employment of various 
meals, which are so readily mixed with chaff; and, second, in the 
moistening and softening which chaff usually receives before it is 
eaten. Unchaffed straw and hay may, however, be moistened and softened, 
and thereby much improved, inasmuch as the softening prepares it for the 
stomach, and makes it all the more easily digestible. 
8. I use maize, rice, pea, and bean meals, always mixed with chaff that 
has been moistened with water. I also use a good deal of linseed and de- 
corticated cotton-cakes. I should seldom use linseed-cake, save to cows in 
milk, and to yearlings, if only my cattle would eat enough of the cotton- 
cake. As a matter of fact, they will not eat enough of it, particularly when 
out at grass; and I induce them to eat more by giving them half cotton and 
half linseed. My land does not scour, or I should use the undecorticated 
cotton-calie, I think. 
