Latin square of four breeds of sheep with four diets

Usage

data("depalluel.sheep")

Format

A data frame with 32 observations on the following 5 variables.

food: diet
animal: animal number
breed: sheep breed
weight: weight, pounds
date: months after start

Details

This may be the earliest known Latin Square experiment.

Four sheep from each of four breeds were randomized to four feeds and four slaughter dates.

Sheep that eat roots will eat more than sheep eating corn, but each acre of land produces more roots than corn.

de Palleuel said: In short, by adopting the use of roots, instead of corn, for the fattening of all sorts of cattle, the farmers in the neighborhood of the capital will not only gain great profit themselves, but will also very much benefit the public by supplying this great city with resources, and preventing the sudden rise of meat in her markets, which is often considerable.

Source

M. Crette de Palluel (1788). On the advantage and economy of feeding sheep in the house with roots. Annals of Agriculture, 14, 133-139. https://books.google.com/books?id=LXIqAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA133

References

None

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{

library(agridat)

data(depalluel.sheep)
dat <- depalluel.sheep

# Not the best view...weight gain is large in the first month, then slows down
# and the linear line hides this fact
libs(lattice)
xyplot(weight ~ date|food, dat, group=animal, type='l', auto.key=list(columns=4),
       xlab="Months since start",
       main="depalluel.sheep")
} # }