Cows and sheep eat grass; goats, it is said, would eat the washing off your clothesline. A man became intrigued when he saw a stranger cutting whip-sized branches in a nearby lane and stuffing them into the boot of his car. What was he up to? The answer to the question: "Collecting fodder for my goats." Leaving this case aside, the writer in the English newsletter The Dendrologist points out that tree leaves are nutritionally richer than either grass or lucerne, though less easily digested.
Some species have a particularly high nutritional value, it appears, which make them attractive to cattle - elm, elder and then, as we know here, gorse or whins. (We'll come back to whins further on.) Lime, beech, birch, hazel and rowan are all eaten as well as hawthorn, which is apparently attractive to horses. Not so the horse chestnut, willow and sweet chestnut - all difficult to digest. But suitable for sheep and goats, which latter animal, The Dendrologist tells us, should never be fed on grass alone. And there are killer trees, or rather trees that make animals sick if they eat the leaves. All branches of these should be removed from fields containing animals. They are black poplar, walnut, yew, box and laburnum ... (Some children, thinking the pods of the latter are like peas, have been seriously ill.) Conifer foliage is unlikely to be attractive and oak leaves, while not toxic, are so full of tannin that access should be limited - particularly for cows and milking sheep.
Holly used to be given as winter feed after going through a feed crusher and so we come to furze, gorse or whins - a splendid book on this shrub, entitled simply Furze, by A. T. Lucas and published by the National Museum.
He begins with the words of a song. In English it runs: Would you come cutting furze with me, Mary Malone?/ I would and I would bind with you, My darling and my own. For furze, writes Lucas, although regarded as little better than a troublesome weed, formerly played a considerable role in the rural economy of large areas of Ireland, first as a hedging plant, much as we now use hawthorn.
In 1835 a travel writer going from New Ross to Enniscorthy found the route uninteresting; and "it would have been entirely bare, had it not been for the gorse or whin hedges of dark green." Furze was also a crop. If sown thickly the plant does not branch, it throws up long succulent shoots with few or no spines and the scythe can reap it easily.
Enormous claims are made for the number of animals fed from one acre and ten perches. And there is a picture of a machine for cutting the more branchy stuff. Bit like a turnipslicer. Fascinating book.
