FARMERS' MONTHLY OF HAMPSHIRE COUNTY 



CLUB WORK 



PASTURES ALONE NOT SUFFICIENT 



FOR production' 



Good pastures furnish a wonderful feed 

 for many classes of animals. Di-j' cows 

 and young growing stock can thrive for 

 months at a time on pasture grasses and 

 a little salt. The same does not hold for 

 a cow giving 30 pounds or more of milk. 

 Even on the best of pastures she simply 

 cannot get enough pounds of digestible 

 nutrients, and most of us know that our 

 pastures in Massachusetts seldom if ever 

 qualify as best. 



Some of you heard Professor Frasier 

 of Illinois last summer at Farmers' Week 

 when he described the sort of cow we 

 would have to breed if we expected her 

 to exist on our pastures. She would need 

 to have a muzzle two feet wide and be 

 able to travel 20 miles a day. But our 

 cows are not animated lawn mowers and 

 our pasture season in the most favorable 

 years is short lived. 



A cow giving 2.5 to 30 pounds of milk 

 daily would need considerably more than 

 100 pounds of pasture grass to supply her 

 needs for maintenance and production, 

 without leaving anything over to offset 

 the energy required to harvest the grass. 

 Anyone who has seen 100 pounds of grass 

 in one pile will realize at once that the 

 cow will have to do some traveling to get 

 that amount. 



The Kind of Supplement to Use 



The writer has seen a number of dairy 

 herds recently and the cows seem to have 

 come through the winter in exceptionally 

 good condition. This flesh can be main- 

 tained throughout the summer by sup- 

 plementing the pasture with a reasonable 

 amount of grain. Any extra feed used 

 for this purpose will be more than off'set 

 by a saving next winter brought about by 

 having the animals in good flesh in the 

 fall. Feed at least one pound of grain 

 daily to every six pounds of milk pro- 

 duced. Many pastures will call for still 

 heavier grain feeding. 



The following ration will go well with 

 pasture and based on present quotations 

 will be an economical mixture for those 

 who practice home mixing. 



Corn meal or hominy 

 Bran or ground oats 

 Gluten feed 

 Cottonseed meal 



500 pounds 

 300 pounds 

 100 pounds 

 100 pounds 



To this should be added 10 pounds each 

 of ground limestone, ground steamed bone 

 and salt. 



It has been found that sunshine and 

 green food are helpful agencies in enab- 

 ling cows to make use of mineral supple- 

 ments. It is therefore recommended that 

 any pasture mixture used contain some 

 added minerals. 



C. J. Fawcett. 



County Ae:onts A'isit Xew ■Ter.sey Fnrnis 



Continued from pag"o 1. column 1 

 lowest. Production for the first six 

 months of the contest was 91 eggs per 

 bird. The interesting thing about the 

 contest is that the work is highly system- 

 atized and the pens are kept in a sanitary 

 condition. 



One of the most attractive plants visit- 

 ed was the Green Gate Poultry Farm. 

 It is a five acre place in the Vineland dis- 

 trict with a capacity of about 2000 birds. 

 The pullet production on this farm has 

 been approximately 175 eggs per bird. 

 The average production for the first six 

 months this year was 95 eggs per bird. 

 The white leghorns on this place are 

 large, vigorous birds. At the end of the 

 pullet year the birds have been rigidly 

 culled and only the best are kept for 

 breeding. The hens are kept culled and 

 some of the birds are four and five years 

 old. The pullets hatched from this stock 

 were the most uniform and vigorous lot 

 of pullets we saw on the trip. They had 

 about two acres of alfalfa for range. 

 Every effort is made to keep the soil on 

 this farm in a sanitary condition through 

 frequent plowing, liming and seeding of 

 the yards. The principal source of green 

 feed is sprouted oats. The oats are soak- 

 ed for 10 hours in cool water and then 

 placed in wash tubs which have holes in 

 the bottom to drain ofi" the water. They 

 are soaked down every day and thorough- 

 ly stirred. It takes from three to five 

 days for the oats to gei-minate. About 

 three pounds of dry oats are fed to 100 

 birds. In cold weather sacks are placed 

 around the tubs and over the oats. The 

 thickness of the covering depends on the 

 temperature of the room. 



Market Gardening 



Several market garden districts were 

 visited. In the Richfield section, near 

 Patterson, there are over 100,000 hot bed 

 sash. One of the progressive growers 

 stated that southern competition had 

 made the use of hot beds less profitable in 

 recent years. A striking thing about the 

 market garden sections is the lai-ge per- 

 centage of the area which has overhead 

 irrigation. Cos lettuce is largely grown 

 in this section. Crops on these farms 

 looked excellent. Spinach and lettuce were 

 low in price but other crops were doing 

 well, particularly bunch beets. On one 

 truck farm in South Jersey the agents 

 had an opportunity to see how sweet 

 potatoes were started. 



Fruit 



In Bergon County we visited the fi'uit 

 farm of D. H. Tice and Sons. They 

 have about 192 acres in the farm, 100 

 acres of which is in fruit. Apples, 

 peaches, pears and grapes are the princi- 

 pal crops. About forty acres are devoted 

 to truck crops. The whole farm is plan- 



ned to produce crops for a roadside stand. 

 They have one of the largest roadside 

 stand trades in Northern Jersey. We 

 were told that on Saturdays and Sundays 

 in the height of the season it is practical- 

 ly impossible to get near the stand. In 

 spite of their production efforts, the 

 Tices find that they have to buy from 

 thirty to forty per cent of the pi-oducts 

 to supply their trade. They do not spend 

 anything for advertising. 



At "Del Bay" we saw one of the 

 largest farms in New Jersey. They have 

 650 acres in apple trees, 470 acres in 

 peaches, 1200 acres in vegetables, 150 

 acres in bulbs and 5 acres of cold frames. 

 The striking things about the orchard are 

 the excellent shaping of the young apple 

 trees, their thrift and vigor and the fine 

 job of cultivation that has been done. 

 The apple trees are all trained to a cen- 

 tral leader and it is one of the best jobs 

 we have ever seen. Gross sales from this 

 farm were about $700,000 last year. 



At the New Jersey Experiment Station 

 we had an opportunity to see how peach 

 breeding work was carried on. This ex- 

 periment station not only has the great- 

 est collection of species, types and varie- 

 ties of peaches anj'where in the world but 

 has thousands of seedlings in various 

 stages of development of which both 

 parents are known. The following are 

 some of the promising peaches that this 

 station has developed: Cumberland, 

 white, semi-cling, ripens before Carman; 

 Pioneer, about the same as Cumberland; 

 Radiance, white, free stone, high quality, 

 ripens with Carman; Eclipse, yellow, 

 ripens with Hiley, small size. At Sena- 

 tor Emmor Roberts' Fruit Farm contain- 

 ing 250 acres of apples and peaches the 

 results of pruning on bearing apple trees 

 were seen. The unpruned part of the 

 orchard had only 14.99f of the apples over 

 3 inches in diameter while the pruned 

 section had 28.1 to 30.6C; of three inch 

 apples. The unpruned trees had 11.1% 

 culls while the pruned section had none. 

 Pruning also increased the percentage of 

 apples having more than fifty per cent 

 color eighteen per cent. 



Fruit has set well in New Jersey, par- 

 ticularly the peaches. All of the growers 

 expect to have a bumper crop and thin- 

 ning of the fruit was well under way. 



At White's Bog we were shown how 

 blueberries were propagated from cut- 

 tings. Some of the new varieties of blue- 

 berries attain enormous size. 



Dairying 



At the dairy farm of John Bishop we 

 saw a twenty-five acre field of sweet clo- 

 ver which had been carrying 75 Jersey 

 cows since early in May. Mr. Bishop 

 said that the cows were averaging ten 

 quarts of milk each on this pasture with- 

 out grain or other feed. They were also 



