694 
Utilisation of Strata as Fond for Stocli. 
“ In wheat straw, for which I pay 35s. per ton, I obtain for Is. 2^d. -50 
oil and 32 Ih. starch, or (the starch reduced as oil) 18^ lb., available for the 
production of fat or for respiration. I know no other material from which I 
can derive by purchase an equal amount of this element of food at so low a 
price.” 
The market value of straw has risen somewhat in most 
districts since this was written, and there are cases where the 
commodity is in so much demand for packing and other purposes 
connected with manufactures that it would be an error of 
judgment to consume more of it at home than was absolutely 
necessary. Mr. Willday, winner of the First Prize in Class 3 in 
the Warwickshire Farm Prize competition, 1892, informed me last 
J une that he is often able to make more money of the straw of his 
wheat crop than of the grain. Still, even although at 50s. a 
ton, it might be economical to sell straw, and replace it for stock 
food with such commodities as desiccated brewers’ grains, malt 
dust, or bran, yet these are not always within reach of all farms 
to be readily available, and possibly those who are able to sell 
straw at higher prices than it is worth to them for consumption 
at home are few in Comparison with those who, through farming 
at long distances from railway stations and populous localities, 
could not sell their straw remuneratively even if they desired to 
market it. 
Some farmers have always been accustomed to give their 
working horses double and perhaps three times as much hay as 
others do, those who give the lesser quantities chaffing up hay and 
oat straw or barley straw together, and often in the proportion of 
only one-third of the former to two-thirds of the latter. As it 
has become a recognised point in food management, even with 
those who give all hay and no straw, that the greater part of the 
hay ought to be chaffed and intermixed with the bruised corn, 
rather than given whole in racks, the change of policy that 
would substitute straw chaff for hay chaff would not entail any 
greater cost in preparation of the diet, unless it was considered 
necessary to steam or otherwise cook or macerate the straw chaff. 
Those unaccustomed to such a departure, and who entertain 
apprehensions that their animals would not be so healthy or 
robust in consequence, need only to consult past volumes of this 
Journal, and they will find ample testimony of farm horses doing 
remarkably well both on rations consisting of one-half hay and 
the other half straw chaff, and on others in which hay has been 
entirely dispensed with, and chopped oat or barley straw, with 
additions consisting chiefly of foods rich in albuminoids, sub- 
stituted. A few such cases may here be quoted. 
In Vol. XIV., 2nd series, 1878, page 631, Mr. John Algernon 
Clarke says ; — 
