Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 April 1876 — The Feeding of Roots. [ARTICLE]

The Feeding of Roots.

A correspondent in your last issue asks the question: “ Can any of your readers give the result of their experience in fattening cattle with turnips, as in England, Scotland and Ireland ?” I have had some experience in feeding turnips and other roots to cattle, fora dozen years past ;and can without hesitation or doubt answer that turnips cannot be economically or profitably used, as a substitute for com, in fattening cattle. In the purely agricultural counties of England, labor is cheaper by from thirty to fifty per cent, than it is here. A very large proportion of the cost of turnips—perhaps five-sixths—is in the labor. The English farmer can raise them at as small a cost as we can, but we can produce hay and born for less than 'half the value of these products in England, Let us look at the matter in another light: A peck of corn a day is a very fair average allowance for a fattening steer, weighing from twelve to fourteen hundred pounds; but experience agrees with chemical analysis in teaching us that it takes from two to three bushels of common' turnips to supply an equal amount of nutriment; say about ten times the weight and bulk of the corn. Now if your lowa correspondent, or any one else, will take time to think and calculate a little on the matter, he will find that if the turnips, after being grown, were given to him in the field, he can barely afford to gather them, store them in a root-house, and prepare and feed them out during the winter to fattening cattle; providing he can grow corn t: thirty cents a bushel. A peck of corn, when fed out, represents a value of eight cents, but I should be loth to gather, and store, and feed out-two bushels and a half of turnips for that amount. There is, however, a proper place and use for roots in producing beef; not as a substitute for corn, but as an auxiliary. They are of especial value to the highfeeder —the stock-raiser who calculates on wintering his beef animals only two winters. With good improved stock, good shelter and full feed, including about a peck of roots a day, through the winter, lor each animal, prime beef can be turned off at from two to two and a half years old; the heifers weighing from eleven to thirteen hundred, and the steers from thirteen to sixteen hundred pounds. Roots, even in small quantities, are a wonderful aid to the powers of digestion and assimilation in a young animal.—Cor. Prairie Farmer. ‘ ...