No. 85. J 307 



For feeding domestic animals^ the value of apples is fully estab- 

 lished with all those who have thoroughly tried them. For fattening 

 hogs they are particularly excellent. In this, as in all other cases, 

 good varieties are most valuable. Hogs are good judges, and they 

 will fatten fastest when their taste is best pleased. They make little 

 difference between sweet and sour, provided the fruit has a rich 

 flavor. Common seedling varieties are however well adapted to the 

 purpose if cooked, and may in all cases be safely estimated at twelve 

 and a half cents per bushel, — a neighbor thus obtained about 500 

 pounds of pork from 120 bushels. Another sold forty dollars worth 

 of pork, fattened with the droppings of half an acre of good orchard, 

 of fine kinds. Others have been not less successful.* For milch 

 cows, sweet apples, regularly and moderately fed, after being cut to 

 prevent choking, have been found to increase the milk one-third in 

 quantity. They are also good for horses, as well as for nearly all 

 domestic animals. 



Molasses, partaking slightly of the flavor of new cider, is obtained 

 by boiling down the freshly-expressed juice of sweet apples, and is 

 not less agreeable to most palates than cane molasses, and equally 

 useful for most of the purposes of cookery. A better mode, how- 

 ever, of making it, is to place the apples in a hogshead made tight 

 for the purpose, and subject them to the operation of steam. The 

 saccharine juice soon begins to ooze from them, and drops down into 

 a vessel, (a broad tin pan is best,) covering the bottom of the hogs- 

 head and placed there for that purpose, from which it runs off 

 through an opening into proper receivers. This juice is subsequently 

 evaporated by boiling. Grinding and pressing is thus avoided, and 

 the remaining apples are ready cooked for feeding hogs. Even sour 

 apples afford good molasses when treated in this way. Ten gallons 

 may be thus obtained from every fifteen bushels of apples, or a gal- 

 lon from a bushel and a half. There is little doubt, that if the same 

 attention were bestowed on the manufacture of molasses from apples 

 which has been given to other modes, it would prove one of the 

 most valuable branches of American manufacture. The liquid thus 

 obtained, is a much purer article than that from the beet or from 

 cornstalks, by a similar process, that is, before clarifying, straining. 



• A week or two of grain feeding before killing; is desirable, as most farmers know. 



