State Dairy Association. 417 



early varieties of cowpeas and you can harvest a crop of hay ex- 

 celled by none and leave the soil in as good state of fertility as if 

 you had given it a coat of manure. 



Some of our friends may say they have not land enough on 

 which to raise all these crops ; to those I say — build a silo and you 

 will have 20 acres more land. 



I have fed a great deal of bran, but of late have almost quit 

 using it; when every seven out of ten sacks I open is adulterated 

 with corn hulls and corn-cob dust, I begin to think we need a 

 "pure feed" as well as a "pure food" law. 



The most of us can improve on our methods of handling our 

 cream and milk. Too many say "what's the use, the creamery or 

 the milk station don't pay enough to justify taking better care of 

 it." To be sure they are not going to pay any more until you do 

 make it better. When I started out dairying I had one thing in 

 mind, and I have it there still ; to make it as good as I know how, 

 regardless of price, and keep on learning. As long as I am away 

 from home I will tell you I have never failed to get a premium on 

 cream — now don't think I am singing my own praises; I am sim- 

 ply stating facts. Before I stopped shipping to the creamery they 

 were paying me New York extra butter prices, F. 0. B. my sta- 

 tion, for my butter fat. I have a refrigerator built in one corner 

 of my milk room which holds 500 pounds of ice, and only cost a few 

 dollars; a carpenter and myself built it in one and one-half days. 

 We fill it twice a week in summer, have a thermometer in there 

 that registers from 45 to 50 degrees in hot weather, can set seven 

 or eight ten-gallon cans of milk in this easily. I had a small cream 

 aerator made that we pack full of ice and set under the separator 

 spout. The cream runs over it into the cream can; over this we 

 have a strainer. This aerator, filled with ice, takes out all the 

 animal odor and reduces the temperature to 40° or 50°, it then goes 

 into the refrigerator thoroughly chilled. We ship out at 8 :30 in 

 the morning. Milk gets to dairy about 12 o'clock ; sometimes it is 

 afternoon, and during all the hot weather last summer I never had 

 a can of sour cream, and we used only ordinary shipping cans. 



We have a two-horse boiler in which to generate steam that 

 we use to steam the separator, cans and milking machines; turn 

 about 80 pounds of steam pressure through the teat cups, the 

 rubber hose, and in fact, every part of the milkers, inside and out 

 are thoroughly steamed twice a day. While I do not believe in a 

 lavish expenditure of money in purchasing machinery, yet I do 



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