362 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



ABORTIOJf IX Cows. 



Lyman B. Sauford, Cherry Flats, N. Y.: This disease, if we may 

 call it such, is increasing every year throughout the dairying re- 

 gion. In Herkimer county it was reported that 8,000 cows calved 

 prematurely in one year. If this be true, one easily can see the 

 damaging eifects it has on the dairy interest. A cow which is thus 

 disordered is not worth half as much the next season, and the 

 chances are that she will never come in right. I have known 

 cows thus fail for three years in succession, when they were turned 

 out to fat. For the past nine years I have been keeping from 

 twenty to tifty cows, and have had considerable experience in 

 cows calving prematurely. In the Winter of 1863, out of a dairy 

 of thirty-five choice cows no less than fourteen miscarried be- 

 tween January and March. I had fed corn-stalks up to December 

 20, and then commenced on good, bright timothy hay alone; 

 it was cut from an old meadow, which had been mowed more or 

 less for thirty 3'ears, and contains no Johnswort or other foul 

 weeds. My neighbors have been in the same fix; some loosing 

 more, others less. No one could find a remedy. 



Mr. Sanford relates that being in Canada he stated his trouble 

 to an old English farmer, who offered a remedy for $10, which he 

 paid. In explaining, the Englishman said that the grass which 

 o-rows on old land does not contain the bone-making material to 

 form the calf, all the phosphate being exhausted. The sum of the 

 receipt was: To collect bones, pound them fine, and when the 

 cows are salted in the fall or winter, they must have one table- 

 spoonful of the bone dust mixed with the salt. Mr. Sanford had 

 the bone pounded and kept from the air, and, as directed, he fed 

 it with the salt, once a week. 



As a result, not one cow in a dairy of thirty-three cows mis- 

 carried, while his neighbors lost, all around him. Nor, since then, 

 has he lost any, except one, caused by getting on a rail-fence and 

 being strained, and he still continues to use the remedy. He adds: 

 "Three of my neighbors tried it last winter, and they did not lose 

 one." I have adopted the plan of feeding wood-ashes, through 

 the summer months, mixed with equal parts of salt. 



Mr. Geo. Arnold, Oakland, Livingston county, N. Y: In old 

 meadows where the per cent of June grass is large, it is apt to be 

 smutty, which is of the same nature as the ergot of rye. Cows 

 fed upon such hay are apt to lose their young. I think, if farmers 



