Cattle and Their Diseases: Embracing Their History and Breeds, Crossing and Breeding, and Feeding and Management; with the Diseases to Which They Are Subject, and the Remedies Best Adapted to Their CureJennings, Robert
Science
Cattle and Their Diseases: Embracing Their History and Breeds, Crossing and Breeding, and Feeding and Management; with the Diseases to Which They Are Subject, and the Remedies Best Adapted to Their Cure
Jennings, Robert
Cattle -- Diseases
Turnips may be sown any time in June, in rich land, well mellowed by
cultivation. Very large crops are obtained, sown as late as the middle
of July, or the first of August, on an inverted sod. The Michigan, or
double-mould-board plow leaves the land light, and in admirable
condition to harrow, and drill in turnips. In one instance, a successful
root-grower cut two tons of hay to the acre, on the twenty-third of
June, and after it was removed from the land spread eight cords of
rotten kelp to the acre, and plowed in; after which about three cords of
fine old compost manure were used to the acre, which was sown with ruta
baga seed, in drills, three feet apart, plants thinned to eight or ten
inches in the drill. No after cultivation was required. On the fifteenth
of November he harvested three hundred and seventy bushels of splendid
roots to the acre, carefully measured off.
The nutritive equivalent of Swedish turnips as compared with good meadow
hay is 676, taking hay as a standard at 100; that is, it would require
6.76 pounds of turnips to furnish the same nutriment as one pound of
good hay; but fed in connection with other food--as hay, for
example--perhaps five pounds of turnips would be about equal to one
pound of hay.
The English or round turnip is usually sown broadcast after some other
crop, and large and valuable returns are often obtained. The Swede is
sown in drills. Both of these varieties are used for the production of
milk.
The chief objection to the turnip crop is that it leaves many kinds of
soil unfit for a succession of some other crops, like Indian corn, for
instance. In some sections, no amount of manuring appears to make corn
do well after turnips or ruta bagas.
The MANGOLD WURTZEL, a variety of the common beet, is often cultivated
in this country with great success, and fed to cows with advantage,
furnishing a succulent and nutritive food in winter and spring. The crop
is somewhat uncertain. When it does well, an enormous yield is often
obtained; but, not rarely, it proves a failure, and is not, on the
whole, quite as reliable as the ruta baga, though a more valuable crop
when the yield is good. It is cultivated like the common beet in moist,
rich soils; three pounds of seed to the acre The leaves may be stripped
off, towards fall, and fed out, without injury to the growth of the
root. Both mangolds and turnips should be cut with a root-cutter, before
being fed out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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