124 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



and my cows gave a good flow of milk. It occurred to me 

 one day that I was doing this at a pretty hirge expense. It 

 was a big job to cut up these stalks, a big job to get up steam 

 every day (or every other day) to steam them, and I thought 

 perhaps the extra milk which I was getting was due to the 

 fact that the food I gave my cows was warm. So I proposed 

 to myself a little experiment, which I carried out. Instead 

 of cutting my stalks, I fed them whole and dry ; but I 

 warmed the water which I gave my cows to drink to a luke- 

 warm temperature, and fed the meal and bran to them in 

 the shape of warm slops; and I kept up the flow of milk just 

 as largely as when I had steamed the food, and taken the 

 labor of cutting up the stalks. That satisfied me that it did 

 not pay to cut corn-stalks. 



One thing more : I made up my mind then that I would 

 find out if the value of steamed food did not come from the 

 fact of the warmth of the food and the water ; so, after 

 feeding in the way I have described for some little time, one 

 Monday morning I told my men to feed the food dry that 

 week, and let the cows out to drink the aqueduct water in 

 the yard. They did so for one week; and the result was, my 

 herd of thirty-live cows shrunk one forty-quart can of milk 

 within that time. When, the next week, I returned to the 

 same system as before, they came back to the same yield of 

 milk. 



Question. Did they have the same quantity of fodder 

 in weight as when they drank warm water? 



Mr. Sedgwick. I should say that they ate a great deal 

 more. I became satisfied that it did not pay to cut up corn- 

 stalks ; and I have not ctit up any since, although I have the 

 machinery in good condition to do it. 



Mr. . I would like to say a few words in reference 



to cutting corn-fodder and cooking fodder. The gentleman 

 who was just up has been through the same experiment that 

 I have, and with about the same result. He has stated one 

 point about which I was in doubt; and that was, wnether 

 warm food produced an improvement in the flow of milk. 

 I kept my herd of cows in an old mill, on account of the 

 burning of my barn ; and I found, when I commenced feeding 

 them this warm food, that at the end of a week they had 

 increased the quantity of milk from two to four quarts per 



