50 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Mr. Sessions. If I had it to spare. 



Mr. BowDiTCH. And you feed between eight and ten 



quarts a day ? 



Mr. Sessions. Yes, sir. 



Mr. BowDiTCH. Eight months would be two hundred and 

 forty days ; and, estimating the quantity fed at ten quarts a 

 day, it would make twenty-four hundred quarts of skim- 

 milk, which, at one cent a quart, amounts to twenty-four 

 dollars. 



Mr. Sessions. That figures up very nicely. You might 

 go up into Canada, and look at a white-pine tree, and say it 

 will make so many thousand shingles, which will be worth a 

 certain price ; but if there is no market for the shingles 

 when you get them, they are not worth any thing. Skim- 

 milk is not worth a cent a quart with us : we cannot sell it 

 for any thing. 



Mr. BowDiTCH. If you cannot sell it, you can feed it to 

 pigs, and make it worth more than a cent a quart. 



Mr. Sessions. I don't know but I can, but I have some 

 doubt about that. What I want to get at is, if there is not 

 something that can be added to skim-milk that will make it 

 nearly as good as new milk, so that farmers who are obliged 

 to take the cream to make butter can use it to good advan- 

 tage. 



Mr. BowDiTCH. As I say, linseed-meal is the best thing I 

 know of. Feed your skim-milk at the proper temperature 

 (ninety-seven or ninety-eight degrees by the thermometer), 

 and make your calf eat it as slowly as you can, and you will 

 be sure to have a very satisfactory calf. 



I agree with what the doctor said about feeding in every 

 particular, except that he suggested giving one feed of rough 

 fodder before he began milking in the morning. If he is in 

 the habit of milking himself, I think he will find it rather 

 uncomfortable. The cow will stretch around this way and 

 that, and step forward and step back, and make the opera- 

 tion of milking a difficult one. I think in a state of nature 

 a cow does not feed much before light. If you turn out a 

 cow in summer or in fall feed, so that she can fill that large 

 No. 1 stomach, she will do it ; and then she will lie down and 

 keep perfectly quiet for six or eight hours at least, until she 

 has chewed that all over; and so, in feeding in the barn, 



