Cylchgronau Cymru

throughout the summer months, being maintained in yards or stalls during the winter on a diet of hay and turnips. According to the 1814-15 accounts, turnip consumption by cattle amounted to between nine and ten tons per week between late December and early June. The turnips, apparently, were carted directly from the fields to the yarded stock. From the accounts of 1819, it can be shown that after an allowance has been made for hay eaten by the occupants of the hunting stables, hay consumption totalled almost seventeen hundredweights per week. At this level, daily intakes of the nine cows, two bulls and seventeen oxen did not exceed ten pounds. Even assuming that hay quality approached that of twentieth century samples (a rather remote possibility in view of the standard of nineteenth century grassland management), intakes of this sort would only provide for half the maintenance' requirements of a ten hundredweight animal, the remaining requirements being met by a daily intake of approximately ninety pounds of turnips.12 These feed levels, however, would only serve to maintain the condition of the animals and would be insufficient to provide for positive growth in the case of feeding beasts, or for milk in the case of dairy cows. With the exception of the pigs and young calves which received small allowances of barley, the draught oxen and cart horses were the only categories of farm stock receiving cereal supplementation to the turnip-hay diet. These animals had a daily allowance of 1-2 pounds of oats throughout the winter months. It must be assumed, therefore, that if the accounts are accurate, feeding animals were kept in store condition during the winter months, milk from the dairy herd being produced from extra allowances of turnips. Although estimates of feed levels can inevitably be only approximate, individual intake levels of the magnitude suggested correspond closely to total consumption of hay and turnips on the farm. The heavy reliance which was placed upon turnips as a winter feed emphasises the vital importance to the farm economy of ensuring a satisfactory turnip crop by paying careful attention to husbandry and weed control. This no doubt accounts for the considerable amount of time spent by regular and casual labour upon both horse and hand hoeing the turnip acreage on the demesne farm. The Southdown sheep flock also subsisted upon turnips throughout the winter. However, unlike the cattle, the sheep grazed turnips in situ, being folded on the growing crop with hurdles which had previously been made by the labourers during off peak' periods in the autumn months. The sheep year on the demesne farm began in mid-September when ewes and rams were enjoined at a ratio of approximately forty to one. Subsequently the flock was folded on turnips until the first week in February when the ewes were taken to grass fields close to the farmstead in preparation for lambing. Although no details of the spring