478 Suggestions for Stock-feeding in the Winter of 1893-94. 
we may safely aim to greatly reduce tlie consumption of it now 
that it is scarce and dear, whilst corn of various kinds is com- 
paratively cheap, bran being a little under, and maize a little 
above, 5 1., per ton. 
J. P. Sheldon. 
■VI. 
Before entering upon the more practical part of the discussion 
of the all-important question as to how best, and most economic- 
ally, to keep our stock during the approaching winter months, 
it may be well briefly to first consider the immediate cause of 
our present difficulty. This, of course, is mainly attributable to 
the long drought experienced throughout the greater part of 
England during the last five or six months, thereby checking 
vegetation, and reducing our straw and fodder crops to one- 
half, and our hay crop to one-fourth, of an average yearly yield. 
It is true that very dry seasons have been experienced in years 
gone by, but associated with circumstances different from those 
now existing, for the facilities for the transport, by land and 
sea, of food of all kinds, from the more favoured districts and 
countries to those parts most seriously affected, did not then 
exist. Scotland, Ireland, Canada, and many other parts of the 
world, are already sending fodder of various kinds to the rescue, 
and thus, what otherwise must have resulted in nothing short 
of famine, at least to our stock, will be in a great measure 
averted. 
Looking back fifty years, farmers, throughout the length 
and breadth of the land, save in the immediate neighbourhood 
of London and other large towns, were, at that time, very 
strictly forbidden by covenant to sell hay or straw. Then, as 
the value of the commodity increased, liberty was given to 
sell, on condition of bringing back equivalents on the land, in 
artificial and other manures, and farmers began to realise that 
with the increasing supplies of oil cakes, and feeding stuffs of 
all kinds, on our markets, this could be earned out, leaving a 
good margin for profit. Thus gradually, instead of the former 
waste, more care was taken to secure the straw and fodder from 
damage by weather, by carefully stacking at the time of 
threshing, till within late years a considerable proportion is 
chaffed, mixed with other foods, and so rendered an important 
element in stock-feeding. 
When a boy at home some forty-eight years since, on my 
father’s farm (about 1000 acres), I well remember seeing most 
valuable hay given to the cows from the truss, in open yards 
and cribs, much of it being wasted, whilst all the time the 
