CHAPTER XIV. 



SOILING CATTLE PREPARATION OF FEEDING STUFFS. 

 I. Soiling. 



364. Advantages of soiling. By " soiling' 7 is meant supplying 

 forage fresh from the fields to farm stock more or less confined. 

 The first American writer to bring this subject to the attention of 

 our people was Josiah Quincy, whose admirable essays, first 

 printed in the Massachusetts Agricultural Journal in 1820, were 

 later gathered into a little book entitled " The Soiling of Cattle, 7 ' 

 now out of print. 



Quincy points out six distinct advantages from soiling: First, 

 the saving of land; second, the saving of fencing; third, the econo- 

 mizing of food; fourth, the better condition and greater comfort 

 of the cattle; fifth, the greater product of milk; sixth, the attain- 

 ment of manure. 



According to this author there are six ways in which farm 

 animals destroy the articles destined for their food. First, by 

 eating; second, by walking; third, by dunging; fourth, by staling; 

 fifth, by lying down; sixth, by breathing on it. Of these six, the 

 first only is useful; all the others are wasteful. 



Quincy reports his own experience where twenty cows, kept 

 in stalls, were fed green food supplied six times a day. They 

 were allowed exercise in an open yard. These twenty cows sub- 

 sisted on the green crops from seventeen acres of land where fifty 

 acres had previously been required. 



365. Station findings. At the Wisconsin Station, l the writer 

 kept three cows for the summer on an excellent blue-grass pasture. 

 During the same period three other cows were maintained in 

 stable and yard by soiling. The cows in the pasture consumed 



1 Kept. 1885. 



