716 
FEEDING EXPERIMENTS ON SHEEP 
AND CATTLE AT WOBURN. 
Rec:ent investigations at the Royal Agrlcultui’al Society’s Ex- 
pei imental Farm at Woburn have related to (I.) Barley and 
]\Ialt as Food for Sheep ; (II.) the Utilisation of Home-grown 
Produce as Food for Cattle ; (HI.) Earth-nut Cake as a Feeding 
j\Iaterial for Cattle. The reports of these experiments are here 
given in the order indicated. 
I. — Barley axd Malt as Food for Sheep. 
It has long been an article of belief with man}’ sheep- 
l)reeders and feeders that a ])arlicular value attaches to malt as 
compared with bai’ley, and that the addition of it to a feeding- 
diet for sheep is distinctly beneficial. The most recent experi- 
ment on the subject recorded in the Society’s Journal (\'^ol. 
XIX., 2nd series, 188.3) is one conducted by the late Dr. 
Voelcker in the winter of 1882-3, at the Woburn Experi- 
mental Farm. The general conclusion drawn from that experi- 
ment was that the difference between the feeding properties of 
barley, and of the malt and malt-dust produced from a like 
fjuantity of barley, was but trifling. This did not take in, it 
should be said, the extra cost involved in malting the barley. 
The Cliemical Committee of the Society agreed to my sug- 
gestion to repeat the experiment of 1882-3 with some modifi- 
cations, and as, in consequence of low prices for home-grown 
produce, attention was being drawn more and more to the feed- 
ing of farm stock with the latter, it was decided to conduct at 
AVoburn an experiment which should combine the question of 
the relative feeding-values of barley and malt, and that of the 
advisability of using barley in conjunction with linseed-cake as 
against linseed-cake given alone. 
The principal modifications of the 1 882-3 experiment were 
Ihat, instead of feeding the sheep in one case with a certain 
quantity of Irarley, and in the other with wdiat had originally 
been the same weight of barley but was subsequently “ malted,” 
both malt arrd malt-dust being given to the sheep, in the pre- 
sent series the barley was that produced on the farm, and the 
malt was purchased at Bedford, the nearest market-town, and 
was similar to that which any practical farmer in the neigh- 
bourhood wisliing to feed sheep on malt would have obtained. 
The more highly nitrogenous malt-du.st was thus not included 
