40 AGRICULTURE OF MAINS. 



THE CARE AND MANAGE.MENT OF THE DAIRY 



HERD. 



By C. D. Smith, Director Michigan Experiment Station. 



This topic is too broad to be covered in one address at an 

 institute. The particular phase of it to which we are to devote 

 ■our attention for the next half hour is the sanitary conditions 

 of the stable. Before begmning this phase, comment upon some 

 things which Dr. Miller has said is called for. In the first place, 

 note the difference between early cut and late cut timothy hay. 

 Early cut hay, per hundred pounds, is worth much more, almost 

 50% more than late cut timothy hay. The moral is obvious, 

 namely to cut the ha}' before the sugar and the starch shall have 

 been converted into wood. 



Xote again the value of clover hay as compared with timothy. 

 Maine farmers could scarcely afford to grow timothy hay, to 

 feed to cows, on lands where clover will do well. I am not 

 inveighing against growing timotln' hay if the markets are such 

 as to warrant it. Timothy hay does not exhaust the soil as some 

 of the people who darken counsel by multitude of words in the 

 newspapers would have you believe. I must speak of this sub- 

 ject of soil exhaustion a little later in this talk. It is all right 

 to raise timothy hay as one factor in a ration, it is all right to 

 sell the ha}' when you can get $20.00 or $25.00 per ton for it. 

 The land is your bank and when you can make good use of its 

 content of plant food you can rightly do so. But timothy hay 

 is not good feed for the dairy cow as compared with either 

 clover hay or alfalfa. Timothy has surface feeding roots and 

 clover has tap roots. The timothy field is accumulating humus 

 and although the mineral resources of the soil are drawn upon to 

 supplv the rapidly growing grass, it is none the less true that the 

 field is growing richer in humus while the timothy crop has 

 possession of the soil. Humus, or rather rapidly decaying vege- 

 table matter, is important to the soil in two ways ; it increases 

 the water holding capacity very materially by making the soil 

 spongy and by making the soil solution rich in nutrients. Again, 

 the decaying of this vegetable matter in the soil aids in setting 

 free the plant food tied up m insoluble form in the soil itself. 



