IN FEEDING DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 
177 
remaining; from the last year into a separate place. I then co¬ 
vered the floor with a layer of chopped straw; and when the first 
load of the newly mown hay was brought in, which I suppose 
was about twenty or five-and-twenty hundred weight, I spread 
over it from three pounds and a half to four pounds of rock-salt, 
or three pounds of kitchen-salt; and I mixed the same quantity 
with each load as it was brought in.” 
M. Kausler always does the same, whether the hay is perfectly 
dry or not: we do not recommend this practice, because we think 
that it ought to depend on the state of the hay, and because the 
quantity of salt seems to be too small. 
Sir John Sinclair gives us, in his “ Code of Agriculture,” some 
prescriptions more useful. To mix some salt with the hay when 
they are making the haycocks, is, according to this English au¬ 
thor, a usual practice in the counties of Derby and York. The 
salt, especially when it is applied to a second crop of trefoil, or 
to a crop that has been much injured by the rain, stops the fer¬ 
mentation and prevents the mouldiness. If straw is mingled with 
the hay, it still more effectually prevents the heating of the rick, 
because the straw absorbs the moisture. Horned cattle not only 
eat the hay thus salted, but the straw which is mixed with it, 
and with more avidity than the best hay that has not been salted, 
and fatten upon it as well. The quantity recommended is a peck 
of salt to a ton of hay. By means of this, hay that had been 
flooded was preferred by cattle to the best hay which had not 
been salted. 
Flandrin has transmitted to us details of the proceedings of 
M. Hell with regard to salting fodder, and he thus explains it. 
M. Hell stacks his hay and after-grass in the following manner: 
He dries the salt by the fire, and then reduces it to a very fine 
powder in an iron mortar. When the hay is getting in, he spreads 
half a pound of salt, prepared in the aforesaid manner, over about 
a hundred weight of hay, and a pound over a hundred weight of 
after-grass, throughout the whole stack. In those years in which 
the hay had suffered much during the harvest, the salt mixed 
with it in this manner certainly prevents it from being spoiled : 
but we believe that it is then better to augment and even to dou¬ 
ble the quantity. Experience proves that a dozen pounds of this 
hay is more nourishing than fifteen of any other, and it is not to 
be doubted that it forms a more healthy food. 
Flandrin also says, that there is a considerable saving in mix¬ 
ing straw with hay; since the straw, in imbibing the juices of the 
hay, acquires its properties. He particularly recommends the 
mixture of straw with the after-grass, since that is more tender 
and furnishes more juices. 
It is to the salting of the fodder that M. Hell attributes his 
vol. v. b b 
