50 Farmers' Institutes. 



To make the caserne in milk, beau meal is the best ; other excellent foods for 

 this purpose are peas, cotton seed meal, bran. Sugar of milk is supplied by 

 whatever contains sugar— fodder corn, beets, turnips and other roots containing 

 sugar. Phosphate of lime comes from ground bone, fed either dry or indirectly 

 by application to the land. 



A young calf fed from milk deficient in this important iugredient will be 

 weakly. Common coarse-fine Onondaga salt should be fed, the best way being 

 to put it daily in the food, but t^ice a week separate from food will do. He 

 feeds less than a haudful at a time twice a week. If fed only once a week, they 

 will eat too much. Mr. Noble's experiments show that scant salt feeding de- 

 creases the quantity of milk. Saltpetre should be fed occasionally as a preventa- 

 tive against garget. A great spoonful of saltpetre given three successive days 

 will cure that disease. Use white paint also externally. Garget comes from 

 high feeding, and we never hear of a poorly fed cow being ti-oubled with it 



Mr. Noble tried feeding steamed food fifteen years ago, keeping a strict ac- 

 count for two years, but the experiment was costly and he soon gave it up. With 

 it, however, a ton of grain lasted seventeen days, while it lasted but twelve 

 days before, and there was a slight gain iD milk. Feeding wet grain is good if 

 warm water is used ; otherwise it is better to feed dry, as he does now. His cat- 

 tle are are now fed as follows : Thirty pounds of ensilage in the morning, 

 grain at noon, hay at night. The noon feeding consists of corn seed meal, two 

 quarts of corn meal, and about three quarts of wheat middlings, or four to five 

 quarts of bi-an. The quantity of corn meal could be doubled, but one quart of 

 cotton seed meal is quite enough, as it is loosening in its qualities. He con- 

 siders manure from cows fed in this manner worth more than in any other way. 

 This is the cost of a cow's food for one day : About eight and one-half pounds 

 of grain, worth thirteen cents, and twenty pounds of hay worth ten cents, 

 making twenty-three cents. 



Mr. Noble thus determined at what price per quart a farmer can produce milk : 

 From one year's experiment in keeping twelve cows, his object being to get as 

 much milk as possible regardless of quality, he got an average of seven quarts 

 from each. The next year another man got five quarts. It costs $46 to keep a 

 cow with stable feeding for two hundred days at 23 cents a day, and $19.80 

 more for the remaining 165 days of pasturage and sowed corn feeding, at twelve 

 cents a day, making the yearly cost $65.80. Producing seven quarts a day for a 

 year the cow's milk costs $102.20, or 2 57-100 cents a quart. The item of ma- 

 nure and several small items are left out of account. Mr. Noble sells all his 

 milk in Pittsfield at five and six cents a quart. While this computation is for a 

 full year, the cow should rest for two months. 



A dairy farm should increase its capacity every year. Mr. Noble instanced a 

 farm that he sold to his son some years ago. It could then only support twelve 

 cows, next year another cow was added, and another the third year, two more the 

 fourth, until now the same farm supports 21 cows as well as it did the twelve at first. 



Many questions were asked of Mr. Noble by M. S. Bidwell and George H. 

 Wheeler of Monterey, Zacheus Cande, H. T. Cande, and Leonard Tuttle of 

 Sheffield, L. T. Osborne of Alford, I. D. W. Baldwin and J. A. Kline of Egre- 

 mont, and many others. 



At special request Mr. Noble gave his experience with ensilage. He is not an 



