462 
On Pulping Roots for Cattle Food. 
mowed nearly all the pastures for hay, which is about half the farm, and Ti lth 
this scarcely ever gi-azed any beasts, and kept but very few sheep. Since my 
occupation I scarcely ever exceed 10 acres of meadow with one field of seeds 
for hay. I keep from 250 to 300 large-size Leicester sheep, and gi-azc from 
20 to 25 large size beasts a year, with other breeding stock in proportion. 
I consider the pulping of roots is better for fatting pigs than anything 
else. My plan is to have a large two-hogshead vat as near the pulping- 
machine as possible, so as to fill it -with a malt-shovel as it comes from the 
machine ; at the same time I keep a lad sprinkling meal (either barley or 
Indian corn) with the roots, and this is all done iu 15 or 20 minutes ; it is 
then ready for use to be carried to the pigs in the stalls alongside the fatting 
beasts. I never could fat a pig with profit until I used pulped roots. 
I get up steam to use the machinery and mis the chatf and pulped roots twice 
a week.— Dec. 14, 1859. 
7. From Mr. M. Slater, Weston Colville, Cambridgeshire. 
I would not be without the pulping-machine upon any account. I give all 
my cart-horses a bushel per day of pulped mangold, mixed with straw and corn- 
chaff. I begin in September, and continue using them all winter and until late 
in the summer — nearly, if not quite, all the year round ; beginning, however, 
with smaller quantities, about a peck, and then half a bushel, the first week 
or two, as too many of the young growing mangold would not suit the stock. 
I believe pulped mangolds, with chafl', are the best, cheapest, and most healthy 
food horses can eat. I always find my horses miss them when I have none, 
late in the summer. I give them fresh ground ever}' day. Young store- 
beasts, colts, &c., do well with them ; but I do not think they could be used 
with any advantage with a flock of sheep : they are, however, useful for 
fattening bullocks, inducing them to eat any food you may wish to give them. 
—Nov. 26, 1859. 
8. From Mr. C. Woolffeld, Balquhain, Kilmarnock. 
The machine I purchased cut the turnips about the size of a horse-bean. In 
the winters of 1855 and 1856 I fed 150 sheep confined in sheds with sparred 
wood floors, in pens of about 10 in eacli, with a space of four feet underneath, 
and about three feet of diy peat-earth laid do^\Ti under the spaiTed flooring. 
My plan was to crunch a quantity of turnips with the machine, put a layer of cut 
oat-straw and hay, half and lialf, on the floor, about one foot deep, covering a 
space of eight feet long by four feet wide, and placing over this a layer of the 
crunched turnip about one foot deep, and so on alternately to about two feet 
high. I then sprinkle with a little salt, throw three or four buckets of water 
over it, trample, and beat the sides and top with a shovel. In three or four 
days it ^vill heat, and in that state sheep are very fond of it. To this mix- 
ture I added linseed and bruised oats, aud gave them as much as they would 
cat. I had a bed of the mixture made daily, so that it was always in a fer- 
mented state for use. The sheep ate it with great avidity, and became fat. 
My sheep were of the black-faced Highland breed, and I think did not feed 
so rapidly as Leicesters would : they were two and three years-old wethers, 
taken from high ground I had in Argjdeshire. They were some weeks before 
they properly commenced eating, but throve rapidlv afterwards. 
I tliink this mode of using turnips profitable ; but 1 did not test it against feed- 
ing on the field — the climate here is so wet, and the gi-ound so uusuitable, that 
it would be out of the question without shelter and old pasture— but I should 
say tlie saving of turnips would be more than half. I am giving the same 
