was not in the habit of noticing the market quotations of those
products. I was surprised at one fact which I learned in connection
with his economy. He keeps about 170 bullocks; buying in October
and selling in May. Now, it would occasion an American farmer some
wonderment to be told that this great herd of cattle is fed and
fatted almost entirely for the manure they make. It is doubtful if
the difference between the cost and selling prices averages 2
pounds, or $10, per head. For instance, the bullocks bought in will
average 13 or 14 pounds. A ton of linseed-cake and some meal are
given to each beast before it is sent to market, costing from 10 to
12 pounds. When sold, the bullocks average 24 or 25 pounds. Thus
the cake and the meal equal the whole difference between the buying
and selling price, so that all the roots, chaff, and attendance go
entirely to the account of manure. These three items, together with
the value of pasturage for the months the cattle may lie in the
fields, from October to May inclusive, could hardly amount to less
than 5 pounds per beast, which, for 170, would be 850 pounds. Then
1,700 pounds are paid annually for guano and artificial manures.
Now add the value of the wheat, oat and barley straw grown on 1,500
acres, and mostly thrown into the barn-yards, or used as bedding for
the stables, and you have one great division of the fertilising
department of Chrishall Grange. The amount of these three items
cannot be less than 3,000 pounds. Then there is another source of
fertilisation nearly as productive and valuable. Upwards of 3,000
sheep are kept on the estate, of which 1,200 are breeding ewes.
These are folded, acre by acre, on turnips, cole, or trefoil, and
those fattened for the market are fed with oil-cake in the field.
The locusts of Egypt could not have left the earth barer of verdure
than these sheep do the successive patches of roots in which they
are penned for twenty-four or forty-eight hours, nor could any other
process fertilise the land more thoroughly and cheaply. Then 76
horses and 200 fattening hogs add their contingent to the manurial
expenditure and production of the establishment. Thus the
fertilising material applied to the estate cannot amount to less
than 5,000 pounds, or $24,000, per annum.
Sheep are the most facile and fertile source of nett income on the
estate. Indeed, nearly all the profit on the production of meat is
realised from them. Most of t
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