SECRETARY'S PORTFOLIO. 437 



Apples are just as good for cows as for pigs, but they can not, like pigs, 

 be permitted to help themselves ad libitum. They must be dealt out to 

 them according to the judgment of the feeder. A half bushel per cow, 

 daily, in two feeds, would be used with advantage. The writer once fed 

 thirty-six cows running to pasture, each per day a peck of common apples 

 for forty-five days, and the daily milk and cheese record of the season 

 showed a production of 430 pounds of cured cheese, due to feeding the 

 apples, equal to seventeen ounces of cheese from each bushel of apples, which 

 was worth, as dairy cheese is now, ten cents a pound. The whey from the 

 increase of milk to make that amount of cheese, reckoned at seventy-five 

 cents per 1,000 pounds, was worth $2.90, making the total product from 405 

 bushels of apples fed, 845.90, equal to 111 cents per bushel. It cost less 

 trouble to feed the apples to the cows than to deliver them at a cider mill, 

 though one was quite convenient. We have no statistics of results from 

 apples fed to cows when making butter, but consider them quite as valuable 

 for butter as for cheese production. 



A Worcester, Mass., county farmer relates experience that is valuable in 

 this connection. He had an enormous lot of low-grade apples, and against 

 all the advice of his neighbors, he decided to feed the fruit to his milch cows. 

 Accordingly he commenced on a large old cow which was near going dry, 

 giving only four quarts per day, feeding her in connection with her summer 

 pasture exclusively four quarts of hard Greening and Baldwin apples, prin- 

 cipally windfalls, night and morning, the quantity being gradually increased, 

 until at the end of the week she was eating about one bushel per day of the 

 sourest and hardest of these windfalls ; the effect was such that her milk in- 

 creased from four quarts to six or rather more per day. Another cow, in 

 fresher milk, giving eight quarts daily, was next tried. 



At this time the cows had been running in rowen feed several days, which 

 would probably make some difference in the quantity of milk, yet upon the 

 top of this better feed the second cow was brought, when upon her full feed, 

 to a regular daily yield of 12 to 14 quarts of milk. His dairy consisted of 

 five cows, all of which, except one, would have eaten over a bushel a day 

 could they have got them ; that one was a smaller one, though a good sized 

 heifer. Half a bushel was found to be as much and sometimes more than 

 she could manage at one feeding. The average increase of milk upon the 

 five cows was fully 50 per cent. 



Exporting Apples. — J. C. Houghton & Co. of Liverpool gave the fol- 

 lowing excellent hints to our exporters of apples : 



In the first place, we cannot impress upon the packers too strongly the im- 

 portance of having the fruit carefully selected, and not mixing poor or small 

 fruit with that of fine quality, but keeping the two entirely distinct and 

 packed under different brands. For really tip-top fruit snippers should 

 always stick to one brand, and if they are careful to maintain the quality, 

 buyers in the English market very soon get confidence in the mark, and will 

 on that account pay a better price for it than they will for unknown brands, 

 although the respective qualities may be really identical. You can readily 

 understand, however, that if the shipper now and then sends a poor parcel 

 under the brand he has adopted for his first-class fruit, he will, in endeavor- 

 ing to get a high price for a particular lot, cause our buyers to lose con- 

 fidence in the brand, and we feel confident that in the long run he will find 



