Excerpt from Forage Crops in Denmark: The Feeding Value of Roots, Selected Strains of Roots and Grasses, Guarantees in the Trade in Seed

A remarkable series of experiments carried out at the Laboratory for Agricultural Research, Copenhagen, showed that the despised roots not only increased the production of milk, but that, in general, the dry matter in the roots had the same food value as the same amount of grain. In other words, one pound of grain in the ration of a milk cow could be replaced by such a quantity of roots as contained one pound of dry matter. One of the striking effects of these experiments was to increase the area of root-creps in Denmark from 6000 acres in 1861 to acres in 1919. Whereas in former days the root-cr0p area in Denmark was almost negligible, the percentage of mangels, swedes, and turnips to the total acreage under crops and grass is now in Denmark as compared with 54 in Great Britain.

The Danish farmer having learned that the dry matter in the roots which he grew was as effective as the dry matter in his grain crops for producing milk, naturally set himself to find out if the total quantity of dry matter from his turnip fields could be increased. The first movement in that direction was to discover superior strains of seed which would give, in the first place, larger crops. By experimenting and applying the results of the experiments the average yield of mangels increased from 16 tons per acre to 21 tons per acre in a few years. A good cropping strain alone was not enough, however. What was wanted was a strain yielding larger quantities of actual feeding material. It was found, for instance, in one of the experiments, that one strain of mangels producing a very large crop with a low percentage of dry matter actually yielded a smaller quantity of feeding material than a smaller crop grown on the same field but of a superior strain. The bulky crop required the farmer to cart fifty additional loads of water from his field without getting any more feeding material for his stock.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.