The Express.
London, England, 1853-08-19 00:00:00

THE SHORT HAY CROP.

There is a good deal of anxiety everywhere about
the wheat crop of this year; and a good deal of con-
gratulation about the barley and oat crops : but less
is said about the hay than the subject deserves. The
subject of hay has risen to be of even more impor-
tance than it was before the days of railroads, when
the welfare of tens of thousands of post-horses was
implicated with the June mowing. After those
horses were shelved, hay lost some of its dignity for
a few years, till the admission of foreign cattle under
the tariff of 1842 gave that stimulus to stock farming
which has gone on increasing ever since, and cer-
tainly will go on increasing for many a year to
come. The more secure we find ourselves, under
Free Trade, of a good supply of grain from various
parts of the world, the more we turn, very wisely, to
stock and dairy farming; and the more important,
in consequence, does the hay crop become. Our
agricultural journals are already pointing out to the
farmers that the butter trade is a far steadier
one than the corn trade; and nobody doubts that
we are dreadfully stinted in cheese, and that
the consumption of butcher's meat has yet to
extend to large classes of agricultural people who
now hardly know the taste of it. At this moment,
we hear much of the high prices of stock in the
market ; and at this moment, there is less anticipa-
tion than there might be of the approaching time
when the prices of stock will probably fall, from the
excessive dearness of hay next winter, and the neces-
sity that farmers will be under to rid themselves of
the cattle that they cannot feed.
In the rains of the winter, the hope was that, how-
ever the wheat lands might suffer, the pastures
would flourish after such an irrigation. But then
came months of cold dry weather, during which the
grass seemed scarcely to grow at all, except in the
rare spots where artificial irrigation is practised.
And, as every thing else was backward too,
the shutting up the pastures for hay was a thing
difficult to manage. The winter stock of food was ex-
hausted; and it was necessary to cut the grass, over
many hundreds of acres, from day to day, for the
day's food. At bud came good weather, and the
groves sprang up and rushed into flower. Some,
but not very much, was saved in this fragrant and
perfect state ; but there was temptation to wait for
its becoming somewhat thicker, and then the rain
came, and poured down for weeks. Since it ceased,
the agricultural world has been so busy—the hay
harvest being five or six weeks late—that too much
of the gnu has gone to seed, injuring the quality
of the hay, and well-nigh ruining that of the soil.
The mischief is great ; and when winter comes, we
shall find the seriousness of the deficiency in the
high price of hay. If, by that time, we
are blessed with any approach to that system of agri-
cultural statistics which we mean to have as soon as
we can get it, we shall find the national loss of pro-
perty, in consequence of the deficient hay crop, to be
serious enough to set us thinking how we can secure
ourselves against its happening again.
In some of the less improved districts of England,
the rule. still is, as •it was when Davy suggested the
use of bone-dust for manure, and was laughed at by
the farmers for his pains, that it takes three acres of
grass land to feed a cow; whereas, not only in more
advanced districts, but in many old-fashioned places,
it is found possible to feed two cows on half that
quantity of land. This is a very moderate proposal; for
we do not want to make a rule out of a few ex-
ceptional cases of extraordinary painstaking, or
marvellous high farming. By moderate skill and
care, and application of capital, it is found practi-
cable to feed four cows instead of one on three
1 acres of land. Now, what atrocious waste is
here—in those old districts where the cattle roam,
spoiling with their wasted manure (so pernicious
when wasted !) miles of pasture, while millions of our
people are in want of meat, butter, and cheese, and
while a bad hay season cost' us hundreds of thou-
sands of pounds! These are the facts that a system
of agricultural statistics would inform us of; and the
resit of such information would be an institution of
stall feeding of cattle which would place us almost
beyond the reach of such deficiency and loss in
future.

The advantages of stall feeding have been so clearly
proved in so many published cases, that it would
hardly be supposed necessary to insist upon them
but for questions and expressions of amazement that
occasionally make themselves heard. A small
farmer in an old-fashioned district is still asked what
he can possibly find for his men to do, seeing that he
has as many men as acres; and he is told that he is
very wasteful of wages, for his neighbours find that
one man can manage nine acres, taking care of cer-
tain horses to boot. We still see the old-fashioned
men buying various manures at high prices, and
wasting a world of time, and cart, horse, and man
power in getting seaweed and the like, while their
cows are poaching their wet pastures into a sort
of honey-combed surface, where the dressing can-
not be properly distributed, and tho mowing
will be a sorry affair : where also the lumpy
state of the grass is an offence to the
eye, and a vexation to the mind that thinks of the
waste of manure that is the cause of the lumpiness.
Such are the nine acres, when in the charge of one
man. The one acre, in the opposite case, is fertile in
every foot of it ; and with a fertility which suffices the
cow for the year round. If any of it is in grass, it is
rolled to a smoothness almost like that of a lawn; it
is dressed with bone dust or guano ; it is watered
with liquid manure ; it is bush-harrowed ; it is inter.
dieted to duck or dog, and to every other creature ; and,
when in its early fragrant flowering, it is cut down and
found to amount to three tons per acre ; and, if
desired, it will yield another crop of nearly the same
bulk. As for the part that is not grass, the
cabbages, which are the most nutritious of aliment
for cattle, are growing all autumn and winter
Ifor spring food, to come in with rape, or
rye grass, or lucerne, while the grass is
growing for bay ; and then in spring comes

the sowing, in intermediate rows, of swedes, man-
gold, Belgian carrots, Bc., to give their nourish-
ing leaves in autumn, and their roots in winter.
And in the stable and the tank, meantime, is the
home-made guano accumulating which bears its
share in the beneficial experiment, and fills its place
in the modern agricultural rule—the more green
crops, the more stock ; the more stock, the more
manure ; the more manure, the more green crops.
And here comes the other popular objection : it is
so cruel to stall-feed cows—to keep them shut
up ! No doubt it may be made a cruelty,
if mismanaged ; but no one who has compared
the condition of stall-fed with roving cattle, with
due consideration of age, variety of seasons, and
average of years, can have any doubt that the ad-
vantage rests with the stall-fed animals, as to health,
comfort, and longevity. As to the state of the case
in March there will probably be no dispute, the
winter accommodation of roving cattle being, of
_ _

course, in every way inferior to that which ie ar-
ranged for permanent residence. We do not fear to
take July—the grandest month of the year for out-
door cattle. If put out in July, the stall-fed cattle
will return eagerly to their stable to escape the sun,
the flies, or the first drops of rain. When people
talk of a state of nature as best for cattle, they have
not only to mako sure that a primitive age is a
golden age for the beasts of the field, but to
remember that the primitive age cannot be renewed
or imitated by English farmers. They must re-
member that aboriginal cattle had the range of forests
for shade, and ponds and streams for coolness, and a
power of vagary of all sorts, quite unlike what can
be allowed to out-door cattle on modern farms. Even
in the early days, the cattle were certainly driven to
stand in the water and crouch in shade where insects
abounded, and must lash away the flies without
ceasing, under penalty of going crazy. And the
dislike of cattle to rain, and the injury done to cattle
by rain, are well known. From these evils stall-fed
cattle are guarded. If properly cared for otherwise
—if curried like horses, and rubbed down the legs,
and placed in airy, well-cleaned stalls—they wi❑
show by their plight, by their produce, by their
freedom from disease, and by their longevity, that
they are no victims of cruelty.
This matter is important now because the hay
has, to a considerable extent, failed, and the conse-
quences are sure to show themselves next winter and
spring, while it is yet time to prevent so serious a
loss from recurring next year. It is yet is time to
prepare the ground and sow spring food, other than
grass, and to begin a large practice of agricultural
economy in the stall-feeding of cattle. The next
winter must be got over as it best may : and the pro-
bability is that a quantity of stock will change
hands, and undergo doom, from the high price of
hay. But we may be ready to make a new start,
from that time forward, and to bring our land to
bear such an increase of stock, in proportion to its
area, as may fortify us against future failure of the
grasses by giving us a surplus of stock out of which
to make a surrender, and a variety of aliment for our
stack which shall reduceone dependence on any one
sort to a point of safety.

MORE MISTAKES OF THE "Timzs."—The Times
yesterday announced that the coal trade of the New-
castle districts had resolved to raise the price 2s. a
ton. This, wo understand, is a mistake ; the increase
of price decided on being only, we are assured, 2s. a
chakircm, or about 9d. a ton.