Feeding Sheep on Whins

Southland Times, Issue 14516, 16 December 1899, Page 2 (Supplement)

Feeding Sheep on Whins

In the newly issued volume of the Royal Society’s Journal Dr. Voelcker tells, with becoming modesty, how in his experience as scientific conductor of Woburn Experimental Farm he has discovered a system of cropping, by which any moorland or other waste laud capable of growing whins can be made, without any expense for manure, to yield crops, which in feeding value will rival the best root crops of any season. 'This newlydiscovered system, by which moorland or other waste land is to be made equal in cropping value to the best root-growing lands, is to grow whins,harvest them in the orthodox way, then crush them in a mill, and feed sheep with them. The way in which this great discovery was made by Dr. Voelcker was on this wise :—At the Woburn Experimental Farm of the Royal Agricultural So, ciety there is on the hillside of one of the fields a very poor and sandy piece of soil, on which, prior to 1897, no satisfactory crop could be got to grow. On this povertystricken land barley was drilled inMay, 1897, andlateron gorse-seed wasdrilled between the rows of barley. No manure was applied to the land, and as a matter of course, the barley crop was a very poor one. The whins, however, came away all right, and showed a growth of from 2 to 3 inches above the ground through the winter. By October, 1898, the crop of whins was ready for cutting, and the crop cut during the winter weighed 11 tons per acre. The gorse was crushed in a mill and used for feeding sheep. Dr. Voelcker found this crushed gorse was an excellent food for sheep, as the sheep fed on gorse, supplemented by an allowance of linseed cake, hay, and swedes, not only showed a much higher daily gain in weight, but also yielded a vastly superior quality of mutton compared with those sheep that had been fed on swedes, linseed cake, and hay. Besides, a number of the sheep fed on roots, linseed cake, and hay developed illnesses of various kinds, whereas ‘all the gorse-fed sheep kept quite well throughout.’ Dr. Voelcker states the results of the feeding tests as follows :—

The sheep fed on the gorse in addition to roots did decidedly better than those fed on roots alone [in addition to linseed cake and hay]. Not only were the carcase weights of the gorse-fed sheep better, but on looking over the lot of fourteen carcases, the butcher being asked to pick out the ones which he considered best, selected seven, and of these seven no less than six came from the pen fed on gorse. They were much fatter about the kidneys, and were generally ‘riper.’ It was a matter of general observation, the butcher remarked, that sheep that season were turning out badly. This he attributed to the poor quality of the roots, and the gorse-fed sheep he thought decidedly above the average, and certainly the best lot of sheep he had so far had. This view was confirmed by his customers,and they were loud in their praises of the mutton of the gorse-fed sheep, describing it as possessing that ‘herby’ flavour peculiar to sheep fed on Brighton Downs.

From this it appears that the moit up-to-date lesson which the agricultural science of Dr. Voelcker can offer to agriculturists is ‘Grow whins and feed sheep on them.’ Our forefathers in the ‘land of brown heath and shaggy wood’ used to cut whins and bruise them for stock food, and whin-mills were then comparatively common throughout the country. But through the operation of that inexorable law, known as ‘the survival of the fittest,’ the -whin-mill has become almost as extinct as the dodo,'' and for many long years one of the greatest objects of the moorland farmer has been to eradicate the whins from his land. But it has been reserved for this fin de siecle and ultra-scientific time to, produce a prominent scientist who teaches that the most profitable course for farmers to follow is to return to the practices of their very practical but dreadfully unscientific forefathers so far as the growing of whins and the feeding of sheep are concerned. —N.B. Agriculturist.