480 Suggestions for Stock-feeding in the Winter of 1893-94. 
and cattle out of the mud, although possessing little or no 
manurial value in itself. 
Another article of food, and one in ordinary seasons over- 
looked, is gorse, furze, or whin. I have a neighbour who for many 
years now has kept down a few acres of gorse. This he cuts 
every year in the dead of winter, putting it daily through the 
chaff-cutter, with a proportion of straw, and giving it to his milk- 
ing cows with, to my own knowledge, good results. The top 
shoots of gorse, even in old coverts, might in a hard winter 
serve a turn. 
Every opportunity is being taken for putting in, during this 
autumn, crops of trifolium, mustard, cabbage, rape, kale, rye, 
vetches, and other green crops, in addition to our very moderate 
crops of mangel, swedes, and turnips, to keep the sheep and 
cattle in the spring. The dry summer has helped us to do 
this with less labour than usual, the land being clean and very 
healthy. I think it has been noted by many farmers this 
season what a very useful, but somewhat neglected, fodder plant 
lucerne has proved itself, cutting three and even four times in 
spite of the dry weather, and I am confident a large acreage will 
be sown with it next spring ; it has come up thickly in some of 
our newly laid-down pastures, producing feed when the finer 
grasses had stopped growing. What must prove disastrous next 
year, and tend to keep up the price of hay, is the almost total 
failure of the young grass seeds sown with the spring corn ; in 
some fields they have improved a little, and everything is being 
done to mend them with trifolium, rye grass, and other seeds, 
but so far the weather is unfavourable to promote growth before 
cold sets in. 
I have been favoured with a few hints, from one or two lead- 
ing agriculturists, as to the system they intend carrying out in 
feeding their own stock through the winter, and think it well to 
give some of the proposed rations in detail. 
Horses . — Wheat chaff with some oat or barley straw, cut 
fine, mixed with 3 bushels of the following mixture for each 
horse per week, adding a little salt : — 1 bushel brewers’ grains 
and 2 bushels of maize, Egyptian beans, and oats, in equal 
proportions. Estimated cost, 8s. per week. (In feeding horses 
I have found malt dust, well soaked in water, a valuable mate- 
rial ; a proportion of roots or potatoes may be added, and less 
corn given.) 
Milking Cows . — A small allowance of hay with oat or barley 
straw chaffed. Add 1 bushel bran, 4 bushel toppings (or sharps), 
1 bushel oatmeal, with a small quantity of grains and salt. Esti- 
mated cost per week, about 7s. 6d. Decorticated cotton cake may 
