SELECTED ARTICLES

                    WOOL-GROWTH IN SHEEP AS AFFECTED BY THE CARBO-
                                        HYDRATE-CONTENT OF THE DIET.

                                                                BY

                                                    A. H. H. FRASER,

                                Rowett Research Institute, Bucksburn, Aberdeen,

                                                                AND

                                                        J. E. NICHOLS,

                       Biologist to the Wool Industries Research Association, Leeds.

(Reprinted from the E mpire Journal of Experimental Agriculture, Vol. II, No. 5, January 1934,
                             with the kind permission of the Clarendon Press, Oxford.)

                                            INTRODUCTION.

It is known that the quantity and quality of wool is affected by the nutritional
plane of the sheep. Thus Hardy and Tennyson [1] showed that both the growth and
coarseness of wool were greatest in summer or autumn and least in midwinter, and
that there appeared to be a close relationship between the thriftiness of a sheep
and the quality and quantity of wool it produces. Wilson (2) and Weber (3), as a
result of feeding experiments, showed that the plane of nutrition had a marked
influence on wool-production. Weber found that sheep full fed on ground corn
and alfalfa meal produced more, longer, and coarser wool than those fed on alfalfa
meal in such amounts as to cause a slight loss in body-weight.

Owing to the protein nature of wool, nutritional research has been mainly
centred on the protein or constituent amino-acids of the sheep's diet. Thus
Marston and Brailsford Robertson (4) suggested that dietary cystine was the probable
limiting factor in wool-production. In the " Meteor Downs " experiment, Marston

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