228 REVIEW — REPORT OF THE FARMING OF CORNWALL. 
quantity of spring feed, and are cultivated chiefly for this purpose 
on a great many farms. The introduction of the chaff-cutter has 
considerably reduced the expense of horse-keep in the winter 
months : the saving in the item of hay only, by giving chaffed straw 
and clover instead of an unlimited supply of hay, is immense. 
The usual proportion of chaff and oats is from 6 lbs. to 8 lbs. of 
oats to every 20 lbs. of chaff; and 20 lbs. to 30 lbs. of this mixture 
is sufficient for our agricultural horses, according to size, with fair 
or even hard work ; the hay in the rick being omitted altogether. 
Of late the swede turnip has been introduced as food for horses, in 
conjunction with straw, hay, oats, &c. The following allowance 
has been used on Barteliver farm in Probus for a number of years, 
— No. 1 used during a scarcity of hay, No. 2 when plentiful : — 
No. l. 
s. d. 
10 lbs. of chaffed straw, at 20s. 
per ton 0 1 
12 lbs. of oats 0 9g 
16 lbs. of swedes 0 1 
Expenses of cutting and chaff- 
ing 0 
Cost of keep per day... 1 0 
No. 2. 
s. d. 
16 lbs. of hay (chaffed) 0 6 
6 lbs. of oats 0 4\ 
16 lbs. of swedes 0 1 
Expenses of cutting and chaff- 
ing 0 0£ 
Cost of keep per day... 1 0 
A great many farmers find their advantage in steaming swedes as 
food for horses, and this practice is becoming very common. Steam 
apparatus of various kinds are manufactured in the county for this 
purpose. I witnessed a very superior one of this kind on Colonel 
Scobel’s estate in Sancreed. The boiler is 12 feet in length, and 
6 feet in diameter; which, at an expenditure only of 8cwt. of coals 
per week, supplied, in the winter of 1843, 100 head of fattening 
and store cattle, 30 horses and colts, and 100 pigs with steadied 
potatoes and turnips, and chaffed straw and hay, also steamed ; all 
this stock, too, being kept on a farm of 150 acres. The 
fattening pigs are fed on steamed potatoes, with about 12 gallons 
of barley each. The store pigs get nothing else than the steamed 
turnips, and the drainage from the steam vats, being the condensed 
liquid produced after the process of steaming. The advantage 
derived from this method of feeding horses on cooked food in the 
immense, being more than sufficient to meet the expense incurred in cutting, 
carting, and feeding.’ He adds, ‘ I keep nearly double the quantity of stock 
that I did before I commenced the soiling system, and in a much better 
condition. I can also cut a greater quantity of hay per acre, and put more 
land into tillage ; and I am fully persuaded that it is the groundwork of good 
farming on arable land, and no farmer can make a profit without it.’ 
