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106 THE GENESEE FAEMER. 



oxen, or cows. But men producing milk to sell rarely fail to feed liberally on slops of 

 some kind, or roots that contain more water than green grass does, which is 75 per 

 cent. We recently visited a pretty extensive daiiy establishment near Washington, and 

 found thirty thousand bushels of turneps well housed for feeding cows. In these turneps 

 there is not less than 90 or 91 per cent, of pure water, and yet the milk from this dairy 

 is said to be the best sold in the city. We have frequently heard it commended by 

 intelligent gentlemen who know nothing of the way in which the milk is produced. 

 Nearly all the hay is sold off this farm, and a large stock is kept on roots and cornstalks, 

 shucks and blades. The farm is the property of Mr. Charles Calvert, President of 

 the Maryland State Agricultural Society, and contains about 2700 acres. It is grazed 

 by some of the best Short Horns, Ayreshires, and Alderneys, in the country. Milk is 

 sold at twenty-five cents a gallon by the quantity the year round. 



From an extended observation and large correspondence, we have reason to believe 

 that the culture of carrots and other roots for the feeding of cows and other stock, is on 

 the increase ; but it is an error to suppose that a pound of carrots is equal in value to a 

 pound of oats for a horse or an ox. 100 lbs. of dry oats contain only 12 of water; 

 whereas, 100 of carrots contain 86 pounds of water. One advantage in feeding carrots 

 is, that the digestive organs separate all or nearly all of the elements of nutrition which 

 they possess ; while cattle and horses often void corn and oats whole, or only slightly 

 digested, and in a way that the farmer loses much of the value of the grain consumed. 

 This remark applies more to the Middle, Western, and Southern States, than to the 

 farmers of New York and New England. The fault we find with the latter is, not that 

 they decline to investigate the principles of good husbandry themselves, but for virtually 

 instructing their representatives in State and National Legislatures to withhold all aid 

 from such as desire to study agriculture as an honorable profession. Nobody knows 

 anything beyond a guess about producing milk, meat, or wool, in the United States ; 

 not because there has been no young men of talent and industry to investigate these 

 branches of husbandry in a critical and satisfactory manner, but because their desire to 

 understand the laws of nature which establish the relations that rocks bear to soils, soils 

 to plants, plants to animals, and animals to their fat, muscles, bones, milk, and wool, has 

 been most cruelly crushed in the bud. A sneer at their " science" is simply adding 

 insult to injury. There is such a thing as killing offspring when born and before ; and 

 this infanticide is inflicted upon rural science in its embryo state, or soon after. 



We have just had the pleasure of an hour's conversation with Mr. Elias Ayres, an 

 emigrant fronj Worcester county, Mass., to Loudon county, Va., where he has been 

 engaged in the production of cheese for several years. He says that a given quantity of 

 food fed to the native cows of the country, yields about half as much milk, cheese, or 

 butter, as it would have done if consumed by such cows as are common in New England. 

 Hogs require about a third more corn to make 100 pounds of pork in Virginia than in 

 Massachusetts. We have in our possession many letters from practical farmers, which 

 go to prove that some get three times more meat, wool, and dairy products from a given 

 amount of grass, hay, grain, and roots, than others obtain. When we said that 100 lbs. 

 of carrots ought to yield 50 lbs. of milk in good cows, we did not say that good cows as 

 now kept do yield so much. The remark was made, as thousands of others have been, 

 to provoke discussion, bring out the truth, and ultimately convince a majority of our 

 readers that the time has come when the study of husbandry and tillage should co a- 

 mence in this nation of farmers. 



Before any considerable quantity of milk can be separated from the blood of a cow, 



the first and paramount wants of her system, for the purposes of constant resp" ition, 



and to repair the waste of elements in bones, muscles, nerves, and other tissues, .mst be 



supplied from her daily food. The primary wants of nature being satisfied in :. skillful 



-. 1^^ manner, wo may then proceed to separate milk from the blood in its passage from the 



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