688 Utilisation of Straw as Food for Stock. 
the pressure of circumstances arising from the partial failure of 
the hay crop. When the fact is also recalled to memory that 
the late Mr. Charles Randell was accustomed at times to feed 
large flocks of sheep throughout winter entirely on straw chaff 
made to absorb this kind of soup, it becomes very evident that 
so shrewd and experienced an agriculturist would not resort to 
such a method of feeding unless it were strictly economical. 
He always took advantage of those times when a scarcity either 
of roots or of hay caused the prices of store sheep to be exceedingly 
low, and without having a single acre of turnips to give them he 
would buy in several hundred sheep to fold on his poorest grass 
lands and give them daily this kind of food in troughs, which 
although not very expensive was made acceptable to the palates 
of the animals, and proved sufficiently nutritive to make them fit 
for mutton at the end of their winter feeding. Mr. Randell, 
indeed, sometimes bought in-lamb ewes, and even then made 
this system of doing things perfectly remunerative. 
Mr, George Adams, the well-known Oxfordshire ram-breeder, 
has home testimony to his peculiar system of cutting 50 acres 
of his best straw into chaff" for the young and store animals. 
As many as 250 beasts are usually fed from Christmas to May 
Day on this straw chaff intermixed with mangel-wurzel pulp. 
On an average five cartloads of root are pulped every morning 
to mix with the straw chaff, and 100 gallons of linseed gruel is 
thrown, boiling hot, over the amalgamated chaff and pulp, which 
thoroughly absorb it, and this is one day’s allowance. The 
amalgamated food ferments, and the cattle eat it eagerly and do 
well. Mr. Adams has been accustomed to feed his ewes on the 
same food with two or three bushels of malt dust mixed with it 
each morning. His barren cows are fattened on the same food 
with 4 or 5 lb. of cotton or linseed cake per day each. He has 
borne the following testimony : — 
“ If it were not for cutting up all my oat and barley straw, and about 
one-half of my wheat straw, to be given as food, I could not keep more than 
half my present stock of cattle and sheep.” 
The year 1868 stands in the record as conspicuous for one 
of the greatest failures of turnips ever known. Mr. G. Neale 
commenced farming near Mansfield on a sheep farm in that 
year, and although he did raise a crop of late common turnips, 
he could spare none for the cattle in the yards. He ground 
barley and cut straw daily on quite a wholesale scale, and 
described what he did otherwise as follows : — 
“ I had a copper fixed and a large stone trough placed by the side of it. 
My ])lan was to boil linseed, 1 lb. per head per day, for two-year-old heifers. 
