158 . BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



butter making and summer cheese making could be profitably 

 carried on by very many of your farmers, and thus more 

 profit realized from their cows than is the case when allowed 

 to go dr}^ through the winter. With improved methods of 

 feeding the stock and handling the milk, together with the 

 increasing demand and higher prices offered for first class 

 dairy products this could be accomplished. Early cut hay 

 well cured, from the best varieties of the grasses, prominent 

 among which might be named clover and orchard grass, with 

 meal, shorts, cotton-seed meal and roots, if fed to dairy cows, 

 not neglecting to provide at all times an abundant supply of 

 good, pure water, will produce good butter, and dairying as a 

 result will prove a success. One of the most valuable feeds, 

 both in its influence on the fertility of the land and on the con- 

 dition of the stock and their milk and butter production, is 

 cotton-seed meal. There is also no feed at present offered 

 for sale that is so cheap in proportion to the results obtained 

 from its use. Those who have feed it several years in suc- 

 cession, consider it indispensable. Dr. J. W. North of 

 Augusta, made the statement last winter that while feeding 

 corn meal and cotton-seed meal, equal proportion, during the 

 month of February, there was not only an increase in the 

 quantity of production of milk, but also in its richness, the 

 number of pounds of milk required to make a pound of but- 

 ter being reduced as low as 10.8. lam also confident that 

 his cows, which I saw fed at that time, required a much less 

 quantity of hay than they would had the cotton-seed meal 

 been withdrawn. 



But feed is not the only thing necessary to accomplish 

 favorable results. The cows must have good care. Warm 

 stables and cleanliness will also have their influence for good. 

 During their long winter confinement the daily use of the 

 card promotes the health of the cows. It especially pro- 

 motes an action and condition of the skin, and thus has a 

 tendency to prevent the evils resulting from the want of 

 exercise. Sunlight is also conducive of health, and is of ■ 

 more importance than generally acknowledged. If con- 



