74 



DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 



[Chap. 1. 



with the necessary material. This fact is well known to many farmers, and 

 tliat cows eat old bones with great avidity. We also know that physicians 

 arc using a solution of jihosphate of lime in their practice, and there is no 

 doubt it may be administered to domestic animals with equally good etfect ; 

 and whether, in the case named, it worked a cure or not, it is well worth 

 trying. Many things much more simple have produced wonderful results. 



99. Water for Stock. — See that your stock have an abundance of clear, 

 good water in hot weather. If it is pumped from wells, it should always be 

 standing in boxes or troughs, so tliat stock can have access to it. Select, for 

 hot days, fields with plenty of shade trees in them, to protect stock from the 

 burning sun. Pastures should always contain shade trees, and they should 

 bo planted, if not there. 



Mr. Strawn, the great Illinois farmer, has successfully tried this method 

 of keeping water on a stock farm : 



Dig a basin five or ten rods square, and ten feet deep, upon a high knoll ; 

 feed com in the basin to your hogs and cattle, xintil it is well puddled by 

 the tramping of their feet, which Avill make it almost water-tight. Mr. 

 Strawn says the rains of a single Avinter sufficed to accommodate several 

 hundred head of stock, and that it had been dry but once in twelve years. 



For watering at the barn, in all situations where digging wells is expen- 

 sive, cisterns should be provided, if running water from some brook or 

 spring can not be brouglit in pipes, or sent up by a water-ram. 



100. fhaffin^ Food for Stock. — There is no disputing the fact that chaffing 

 food, particularly' all coarse forage, will pay well, where it is as dear as it is 

 in the vicinity of New York. At the State Fair Farmers' Club, at Elmira, 

 October, 1860, the following opinions were given upon the subject: 



A. B. Dickenson said : '' On good hay you can fat cattle, but yon can not 

 upon corn-stalks, but they are better than poor hay. I can not make an 

 acre of corn-stalks as good as an acre of grass. If you want to raise a big 

 crop of corn, put on barn-yard manure year after year on grass, and after- 

 ward plow it in and make it mellow and ricli, sixteen inches deep, and then 

 corn will never exhaust the soil. Corn-stalks must always be chafl'ed to 

 obtain their full value." 



Col. Butterfield, of Utica, said: "Up to two or three years ago, I thought 

 but little of corn-fodder. I then cut the top stalks ; now I cut up by the 

 ground, and my cattle do first-rate on corn-stalks till March. To get the 

 greatest benefit from corn-stalks, they must be chaflfed and steamed." 



Hon. T. C. Peters, of Darien, N. Y., said : " I grow corn for fodder as well 

 as grain, and cut up from the ground, and chaif the stalks for feeding. Tliere 

 is no other feed for milch cows in winter equally valuable if it is well cured 

 and then chaSed ; and if steamed, it is still better." 



Mr. Lyman Barnard, of Steuben County, said : " I cut up my com from 

 the ground, and cut the stalks up fine in a stalk-cutter, and mix with cut 

 straw, and I find my cattle and horses do as well, or better, than upon good 

 timothy hay." 



