89
1 urnips have been consumed, merely to preserve their condi-tion till they can be turned to grass. It is too expensive anarticle, and too much land would be required to produce asufficient supply, to make it profitable, to give any consider-able quantity of hay, so long as turnips are plentiful and nu-tritious.
It has not become a common practice to prepare turnipsor potatoes by boiling or steaming, nor to cut straw or hayinto chaff for fattening cattle. Both these methods have beentried and approved of, in feeding horses and milch-cows.
III. The produce of fat cattle in beef may be consideredas depending, first, upon the breed, the age, and condition;and, in the next place, on the kind of food consumed; or itmay be desirable to know, first, what improvement is madein every particular breed in a given time; and, second, whatquantity of food is consumed by such breed. For though itis impossible to treat separately of the improvement of cattleand the consumption of food, it is well understood, that uponany given quantity of food different breeds will make more orless improvement; - that some of the articles which have beenmentioned, are not applied with equal advantage to all sortsof cattle;—and that the age and previous condition of eachkind, very materially affect any calculation that might be of-fered for the purpose of ascertaining the weight of beef re-turned from any given weight of food. It is also known,that there is a corresponding difference in the quality of thedifferent articles of the food itself, according to that of thesoil on which it is produced.
These difficulties may account for the writers of the coun-ty reports having declined to enter on such calculations, andthey are not to be completely removed without a very greatNumber of experiments, made with all the different breeds ofcattle kept on the several articles of food, growing on thesame soil, and on a variety of soils. So great indeed is thedifference in the quality of the materials, and in the age,