VEKMONT AGRICULTURAL REPORT. Ill 



the south end of the stable and the manure dropped into that 

 and hauled out at one's convenience. In this case the floor over 

 the cellar must be air tight and abundant ventilating shafts be 

 run from the cellar up through the roof of the stable so that 

 there can be no danger of foul odors and gases in the stable. 

 Some authorities condemn this method without reservation but 

 I believe that with proper precautions it may be safely practiced. 

 The third method is to wheel the manure daily out into a shed 

 built for the purpose. This involves more labor than the other 

 methods but is probably no more laborious than the method, so 

 fashionable in many places, of throwing it out of a small high 

 window to lie under the eaves. This last method is, in every 

 case, extravagant and inexcusable. If you have no pos- 

 sible place to store your manure, and are unable to provide 

 one, wheel it away from the barn to a place not under eaves and 

 not subject to surface wash and dump in a pile. Make your pile 

 to cover quite a surface, keep the top level and packed down 

 and the waste will be a small part of what it would be in a con- 

 ical pile under the eaves of the stable. 



Coming now to the main part of my suggestions on this 

 topic, the interior arrangement of stables, I observe that there 

 are three principal considerations to be observed. In the order 

 of their importance they are : ist, the health of the cows ; 2nd, 

 the comfort of the cows ; 3rd, the convenience of attendance. 



The first condition of health is pure air. The size of the 

 stable must be adequate to the number of the cows. Probably 

 more stables lack in this respect than in almost any other. In 

 our climate from seven hundred to a thousand cubic feet of air 

 should be allowed to a cow. A stable thirty-five feet wide, ten 

 feet high and with an average allowance of four feet to a cow in 

 length of stable is about right for two rows of cows. This does 

 not mean that four feet must be allowed to each tie up but that 

 the entire stable, including alleys, box stalls, etc., average that. 

 Now in securing an adequate supply of pure air it must be re- 

 membered that a cow does not consume air as she does grain or 

 ensilage. The cow can utilize only a portion of the oxygen in 

 the air before it becomes too foul to breathe. Hence provision 

 must be made for the introduction and exit of an enormous 

 bulk of air. It has been estimated that 1400 cubic feet of air 

 per cow per hour is none too much to move into and out of the 

 stable. Of course ventilating shafts vary much in their effi- 

 ciency but if we estimate the motion of air in a shaft at two and 

 a half miles per hour we reach the conclusion that a shaft one 

 foot square inside measurement is needed for each ten cows as 

 an outlet. These outlets should start from near the stable floor 

 and go by the most direct route possible to the highest point of 

 the roof and up through the roof. Inlets for air should open out- 



