Transactions of RHASS Volume 1940 - Page 022
Image details
| Year | 1940 |
|---|---|
| Transcription |
|
| OCR Text |
32 STOCK-FEEDING UNDER WAR CONDITIONS. gains will be somewhat reduced, but the finished pig Will still be produced with a substantial saving of concentrated food. A comparatively minor difficulty in pig-feeding may be a shortage of supplies of the ordinary sources of animal protem.—- white fish meal and meat or meat-and-bone meal. Up till the outbreak of war this difficulty seems to have been com- pletely met in Germany. Firstly it was found that the old proportion of fish or meat meal—about 10 per cent of_ the mixture—was unnecessarily high; with 5 per cent of either of these, perfectly satisfactory results were obtained when the protein balance was made good by usmg _sources of vegetable protein such as soya—bean meal, ordinary. bean meal, or earthnut cake. Moreover, additional supplies of animal protein were obtained in the form of extracted herring meal (La, meal from which most of the 011 is removed in the process of manufacture) and carcase meal. The latter is made at knackeries and slaughter houses from material that was formerly turned into manure. There is no more than a sentimental objection to the use Of carcase meal in pig-feeding, as the material is completely sterilised in the process of drying. SHEEP-FEEDING. It is one of the aims of our national war agricultural pohcy to maintain, or if possible to increase, our home output of mutton and lamb. The arguments for the official VleW are that, even in ordinary times, sheep consume smaller amounts of imported feeding-stuffs, in proportion to the quantity of meat that they produce, than any other class of livestock; that it is comparatively easy to find. substitutes for part of the cake and grain that sheep ordinarily consume; that sheep can make excellent use of some of the coarser feeding- stuffs, such as cotton cake and distillery grains, which are unsuitable for many other purposes; and that in Winter, when the demands on feeding-stuffs are at their peak, the breeding flock can pick up a large part of its hvmg from asture. . p A larger output of mutton and lamb does not necessarily imply an increased number of breeding ewes. On certain farms it may, indeed, be possible to enlarge the ewe flock without any particular harm, but on many others numbers are already as large as they can well be; sometimes the state of affairs that is implied by saying that land 1S. sheep sick’ is largely due to stomach—worm infestation, which can be kept under some degree of control by the'use of drenches and pills; but there is no way of preventing the damage that is done to pasture by punishing it With excessive numbers of ewes in winter and early spring. Where numbers are STOCK-FEEDING UNDER WAR CONDITIONS. 33 already about a maximum, the way to increase output must be to keep the lambs to a greater age and to market them at heavier weights. In recent times there has been a steady tendency towards the earlier marketing of fat lambs and a steadily growing preference, on the part of the butcher, for light-weight hoggets. With controlled prices the incentive to produce young fat lambs and small hoggs has disappeared, and heavier and older sheep will Often be cheaper to produce, weight for weight. It seems best to think separately about the three main feeding problems—those of the ewe in late winter and spring, of the lamb in summer and autumn, and of the winter-fattening hogg. Spring grass is the best Of all foods for the nursing ewe, and the earlier that this can be provided the shorter will be the period of box-feeding. Attempts to force an early bite may, of course, be foiled by weather conditions, but if careful preparations are made it may be expected that, in perhaps two years out of three, spring growth can be produced about a fortnight before the normal time. It is well known that a supply of available nitrogen ‘is one of the things that are required to start grass into gLactive growth, and hence one of the essential steps in the production of early bite is to give, in March, a dressing of about a hundred- weight per acre of a quick-acting fertiliser such as nitro-chalk. But this is by no means the whole story. This nitrogen is like a whip to a horse, and unless the horse is both strong and willing the response will be small. The willing horses among our pasture plants are the ryegrasses and cocksfoot, and the only fields that are worth treatment are those containing a good proportion of these. Obviously, too, a light and well- drained soil will warm up quickly in spring, whereas clay land is necessarily late. The fields for the purpose must also be selected with reference to elevation and exposure. The third necessary step is to adopt a system of grazing in the autumn and winter that will bring the grasses into strong condition—La, a system that will allow the plants to store up a large reserve of food in their roots and leaf-bases. To this end the field, after being grazed fairly bare in July, should be left unstocked during August, September, and October, or until active growth comes to an end for the season. The bulk of the roughage should now be grazed off, and the field should be completely rested again from January onwards. Even light stocking in the late winter weakens and exhausts the ryegrass so that it cannot answer quickly to the fertiliser. Another obvious way of reducing the ewes’ demands for feeding-stuffs is to delay the lambing; this may be sound pohcy in certain cases—0.9., draft ewes which would normally be put to the ram in September may be held back till mid- VOL. LII. 0 |
| Title | Transactions of RHASS Volume 1940 - Page 022 |
