93 



of heat and cold. It is certain, that in order to thrift, cattle 

 cannot be made too comfortable ; their mangers should be kept 

 clean ; their stalls be well littered ; and the cattle protected 

 from currents of air blowing through crevices or holes in the 

 floors or the sides of the stables, which prove often much more 

 uncomfortable than an open exposure. 



I have known but few trials of the cooking of food for cat- 

 tle made in the county, and those not exact enough to lead to 

 confident conclusions. The opinions of an intelligent farmer 

 in Coleraine are, from repeated experiments, strongly in favor 

 of cooking potatoes for his fatting stock. The experiments of 

 another farmer in Deerfield, as to cooking vegetables of differ- 

 ent kinds and Indian meal, satisfied him that the advantages, 

 if any, derived from it, were not an equivalent for the increased 

 trouble and expense. Some very exact experiments made in 

 Scotland, in relation to this subject, lead to the same conclu- 

 sions. 



Punctuality in the hours of feeding should be most rigidly 

 observed. The animal stomach is a very nice measurer of 

 time. In general, the farmers are in the practice of only two 

 feedings a day, in which case they do not place aU the food 

 before their beasts at one time, but stay by them and give it to 

 them as fast as they will eat it up clean. Nothing is more im- 

 portant than to keep the animal as quiet and as well satisfied 

 as possible ; and if the time of feeding is variable, or the usual 

 hour is passed over, he becomes hungry and restless, and his | 

 condition will suffer of course. 



The loss in driving a fat animal from any part of this county 

 to Brighton market, is generally rated at one hundred pounds. 

 The drover receives for driving to market, expenses on the 

 road, and commissions on sale, two dollars for each animal. 

 Some farmers in the southern part of the county may avail 

 themselves by driving to Springfield of the opportunity of 

 sending their beasts to market in the cars on the Western Rail- 

 road, by which, time would be saved, and the animals brought 

 into the market in much better condition than if driven the 



