366 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER, 
[ May 12, 1S92. 
little nouiishment ia the cold wet grass then. Sheep having 
nothing else to eat lost flesh, and subsequently suffered more 
from cold than those which had a regular allowance of trough 
food. 
It is precisely in such adverse seasons that management tells. 
Good results never did nor never will follow a strict adherence to 
line and rule. Exposure to cold and wet invariably tells upon con¬ 
dition ; dietary must be ruled by weather, and that wise maxim 
which tells us prevention is better than cure. Many a farmer left 
his ewes to take their chance upon pasture till a few weeks before 
lambing t'me, then finding them so weak that it was doubtful if 
they would survive the lambing season, recourse was had to a daily 
ration of crushed linseed cake, and after its use for two or three 
weeks we po.-itively heard complaints of the little good it seemed 
to do the sorely tried animals. No doubt it strengthened them ; 
more than this was hardly possible in ewes heavy with lamb. 
Three facts strike one in connection with this matter —i e., the 
common ignorance of animal dietaries, of the low quality ot 
pasture herbage in autumn and winter, and of the harm arising 
from undue exposure in cold and wet. The curious part of it is 
how such exposure appears to be taken as a matter of course. 
Here is an instance of it taken from a recent flock report in the 
Live Stock Journal, where the owner of a flock of Leicesters says 
that he had two ewes starved to death, and several others which 
never recovered from the continuance of wet weather followed by 
bare frosts, the sheep being in folds of wet mud and water for 
weeks ; then the white-fleshed Turnips that remained after the 
first frost broke up were nearly all rotten, which accounts for the 
large quantity of lambs that were born dead or cast prematurely. 
The lambing began in the last week of February. Of the first 
six ewes that lambed only three lambs were alive, several ewes died 
from weakness, twenty-seven in all, and thirty-two ewes either 
cast their Jambs or were barren. The owner terms this “bad 
luck.” Would he be surprised to hear it termed bad manage¬ 
ment ? 
Very different to this is the report of a flock of Border 
Leicesters, which tells of ewes very healthy, of lambs looking 
well, of the lo-s of only one ewe and a few lambs, and of the 
mixture of Oats, bran, a{id Peas given to the ewes twice a day ; 
or of a flock of 200 Southdowns having 106 pairs of twins, 
with the lambs strong, healthy, and doing well. No losses are 
mentioned, and the satisfactory condition of the flock is explained 
by the abundance of sound food. Swedes not yet finished, a 
splendid field of Thousand headed Kale to follow, with the 
Sutton’s Mixture for Early Sheep Feed well forward, and 
upwards of 700 tons of Mangolds in good condition. Accounts 
of some flocks of Kent ewes are excellent, the lambs having 
come strong and healthy, with nearly half twins. Shropshires 
are not so satisfactory, the cause being evidently improper or 
insufficient food, and a want of shelter for young lambs. 
Two serious extremes noticeable again this season were the 
keeping of ewes in wet muddy folds, and the scarcity of food 
on grass farms. The former invariably leads to abortion and 
losses among the ewes, also inducing much foot rot • the latter 
shows the folly of laying down all the land of a farm to grass, 
and of not making at least part of the hay crop into silage. 
The great thmg is to have plenty of sound trough food, not 
necessirily of an expensive sort. For many a season our ewes 
have had no hay: chaffed Barley and Oat straw, with an addition 
of crushed corn when necessary, is generally sufficient, with Pea 
or Oat straw in the racks, and some rock salt always in the 
troughs. With a supply of home-grown corn cake bills are 
avoided ; but it must be owned that some lamb food is used, 
both for ewes and lambs when folding begins ; till then sweet 
chaffed straw is the principal thing. The ewes take kindly to 
this with very little trouble, an addition of crushed corn or meal 
being promptly made when necessary. It is mere absurdity to 
treat sheep in a similar manner im all weather ; rather should 
our treatment be tentative and otherwise intelligent. The long 
spell of low prices has told upon trade : we should try and meet 
it by getting the hoggets off our hands as early as possible. This 
cm only be done profitably by pushing them on from the first ; 
we are then able to breed from lamb ewes the first season, and 
to dispose of the hoggets just when we have done with them 
in folds, or when a favourable turn of markets invites a prompt 
sale. Depend upon it the old process of keeping hoggets till 
nearly two years old has ceased to be profitable ; in proof of 
this we shall have something to say about the frozen meat trade 
another week. 
WORK ON THE HOME FARM. 
Though the nights continued so cold right up to the end of April, 
occasional showers alternating with bright sunshine have brought a full 
plant of all spring crops well above the surface. Weeds are growing 
100 , so hoeing and rolling must have prompt attention now and for the 
next two or three weeks. May came in showery, and this, the third 
day of the month, has been a downright wet day ; and very welcome it 
is too, not only as a harbinger of warmer weather, but as certain to 
dissolve and wash into the surface the chemical manure sown broadcast 
upon winter corn. Much of the spring corn bad manure drilled in with 
it, the quantity per acre being governed by the condition of the land. 
Oats had a full diessing, but to much of the BarFy only a moderate 
dressing was given, our aim being the development of a fine, bold 
mal ing san p'e. without having the straw so vigorous as to become 
lodged by the first storm after it is fully grown. This is a nice point, 
requiring discrimination and fu'l knowledge of the actual conditi n of 
the soil in each field of the home farm. As we have explained 
repeatedly, sustained fertility in the soil by sheep folding, by ploughing 
in leguminous crops, or by a judicious use of chemical manures, renders 
us practically independent of crnp rotation. Corn follows corn in the 
same fi-ld year after year, the only question in the matter being one of 
convenience, and a four-c lurse, or any other precise shift, is obviously 
obsolete now that our practice is so little affected by the influence of 
one cop ufion another. The on y sensible rotation work with which 
we are now acquainted is that of Scotch dairy farmers in Essex, who 
plough and sow a five or six-years laver annually ; the ploughed-in 
layer to h^ve a corn crop at once, for those shrewd, intelligent men will 
have nothing to do with fallows of any kind. They believe in heavy 
manure dresnings, thorough and most careful ploughing, and such thick 
seeding that weeds have no chance of becoming establi bed in their 
land ; and they would be apt to regard a man attempting to expound 
to them the merits of a four-course shift or of fallows as a veritable 
Rip Van Winkle who had slept through at least one generation of 
farmers. 
As green food comes into use horses and cows are narrowly watched, 
as there is much difference among animals in their reception of a 
change of diet. Most horses consume green food g eedily, but some do 
not, and if left to careless carters they are half starved. Avoid the general 
use of whole corn among stock ; all animals eat it readily enough, but 
all cannot assimilate it. Old horrcs especially cannot do so, yet we 
frequently find it being used for them in the most heedless manner. 
METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 
Camden Squabb, London. 
Lat. 51° 32' 40" N.; Long. 0° 8'0" W.; Altitude, 111 feet. 
DA'I’E. 
9 A.M. 
In the Day. 
S 
Ph 
1892. 
May. 
Barometer 
at 32' ,and 
Sea Level. 
Hygrometer. 
Direc¬ 
tion of 
Wind. 
Temp, 
of soil 
at 
1 foot. 
Shade Tem¬ 
perature. 
Radiation 
Temperature 
Dry. 
Wet. 
Max. 
Min. 
In 
Sun. 
On 
Grass. 
Iiiclis. 
deg. 
deg. 
deg. 
deg. 
deg 
deg. 
deg. 
Inchs. 
Sunday .. 
1 
30-099 
51-2 
41-1 
N.E. 
43-1 
59-2 
33-4 
78-9 
26-0 
— 
Monday .. 
2 
23-832 
47-8 
43-9 
N.E. 
45-9 
49-3 
37-4 
65-0 
27-2 
0-079 
Tuesday .. 
3 
2 
44-4 
42 2 
N.E. 
45-4 
46-9 
41-9 
69-0 
40-0 
0-082 
Wednesday 
4 
23-7t)2 
43-0 
44-2 
N.E. 
45-7 
49-1 
43 2 
76-9 
39 1 
— 
Thursday.. 
5 
-.'9-98ij 
43 0 
4j-2 
N. 
45-0 
49 0 
37-1 
87-3 
30-1 
— 
Friday 
6 
30-153 
45-3 
3-1-9 
N. 
44 1 
52-9 
..3-9 
162-1 
28-0 
— 
Saturday .. 
7 
30-241 
46-7 
39-7 
W. 
44-9 
G3-0 
28-4 
li 3-3 
23-1 
— 
21-968 
46-5 
41 5 
45-3 
52-8 
36 5 
83 2 
30-5 
0-161 
REMARKS. 
1st.—Bright sunshine till 10 30 A.M., then hazy and thick, and at times dark with smoke 
fog. 
2nd.—Dull and drizzly morning, showery afternoon and evening. 
3rd.—Overcast all <lay, almost continuous rain or drizzle in morning. 
4th —Wet till 10 A.M., then overcast. 
5th.—Brilliant early, cloudy after 10 A.M. 
6th —Sunny almost throughout, but spots of rain about 11 A.M. 
7th.—Brilliant all day. 
A cool and rather cloudy week; mperature about 5° below the average — 
G. J. Symons. 
