1819. 



THE GENESEE PARMER. 



83 



HINTS TO DAIRYMEN. 



Four years ago the number of cowa milked in the 

 State of New York was within a small fraction of a 

 million. It now considerably exceeda even that 

 high figure; for the dairy business has been greatly 

 extended since the census of 1845. No branch of 

 rural industry present- greater facilities for improving 

 a farm, for increasing its capacity to keep more 

 cows and enlarge' the annual receipts of the husband- 

 man. By carefully saving all the manure, both solid 

 and Liquid, made by domestic animals, it will be easy 

 to raise an immense amount of excellent food for 

 cows, on a comparatively small surface. For this 

 purpose, corn, carrots, potatoes, pumpkins, clover 

 and herd's grass are among the most available crops 

 which we have seen cultivated. 



The dairyman, by uniting skilful tillage with 

 grazing, will experience little difficulty in feeding a 

 much larger number of cows than is now generally 

 kept in New York and Ohio. Of course, he will 

 need more funds to purchase more cows, and more 

 help to milk and take care of them. Many, however, 

 who do not lack the wherewith to procure either 

 labor or cows, fail to see their way clear, how to 

 raise six or eight tons of sweet nutritious forage an 

 acre, by planting corn quite thick in drills for that 

 purpose. Like all other farming operations, this 

 must be practiced repeatedly to be well understood. 

 We have seen some failures, but more cases of the 

 most satisfactory results. There is some trouble, 

 particularly in w T et weather, in curing a luxuriant 

 growth of green maize. Being cut when most suc- 

 culent, just as the kernels begin to form when the 

 whole plant abounds in saccharine matter, it needs to 

 be exposed to the sun, turned over, like thick new 

 mown grass, and thereafter to be bound in small bun- 

 dles and set up to make in small bunches or stooks. 

 The Rochester City Milk Company, and other milk- 

 producing establishments with which we have been 

 acquainted, have found the raising this kind of forage 

 as well as carrots, profitable. At the South green 

 rye, oats and peas are fed to mules, horses and cows. 

 On good land, the expense of growing additional feed 

 for dairy cows, i. e. something beside common pas- 

 tures and meadows, is much less than one who has 

 never tried it would suppose. 



A top-dressing of lime and gypsum spread .over 

 pastures and meadows in the spring of the year will 

 often impart new vigor to the grass, and add greatly 

 to its yield for the season, if not longer. Sometimes 

 more grass seed should be sown, and the ground well 

 scarified with the harrow. Ashes are particularly 

 valuable to scatter over all fields where a good crop 

 of grass is desired. Swamp muck sweetened with 

 caustic lime in the form of compost, is generally 

 worth more than it will cost, to be used as a top* 

 dressing on meadows and pastures. Applied to hoed 

 crops it is also valuable. 



As first rate dairy cows are always in demand at 

 fair prices, every farmer should be c "careful to raise all 

 calves, particularly females, from a family remarkable 

 for good milkers. In this way the dairies of the 

 country will improve rapidly* Much depends on the 

 keep of calves and heifers, and the way in which the 

 latter are treated during the two first years they are 

 milked, in fixing their productive value for dairy 

 purposes. Perfect regularity in feeding, uniform 

 kindness and gentleness, as well as milking reason- 

 ably fast and quite clean, are matters of practical 



importance. A young cow which is much inclined 

 to elaborate a large flow of milk will secrete more, 



it it he draw ii three times in twenty-lour hours, and 

 at eight hours between each milking than she would 

 it milked hut twice b day. Salt eons regularly, or 



have it under a shed where the\ may eat what 



will, after having been restricted a little, till accus- 

 tomed to a full supply by d Have your pas- 

 tures as near the milk house 08 practicable that your 

 herd be not taxed with a long walk to and from their 

 fields to the yard or cow house. 



TEXAS WHEAT. -VALUE OF T.TMT, 



It is stated by a gentleman from Coroicana, in Limestone 

 county, that about forty thousand bushels of wheat 

 been raised in Limestone and Navarro counties this se 

 A part of this u.,. harvested as early as the 9th of May, and 

 it is of nn excellent quality. The grains are plump and 

 and the wheat, it is believed, will average over sixty pounds 

 to the bushel. A large quantity of wheat has been raised in 

 Trinity Valley above Daliis, The experiments in the culture 

 of this grain, indicate that the whole region, watered by the 

 Trinity and its tributaries above Smithfield, is as well 

 adapted to the culture of wheat as the best wheat growing 

 regions in the middle .States. The soil, in that section, 

 contains a large proportion of lime, and it is probably owing 

 to the presence of this mineral that it is better adapted to the 

 culture of wheat than the soil near coasts. There is a belt 

 of country extending quite across Texas from the Red River 

 to the Rio Grande, and including most of the undulating 

 region of that country, that is as well adapted to the culture 

 of wheat as any portion of the Union. This section com- 

 prises at least thirty millions of acres, and may at some 

 future day, yield breadstuffa sufficient for the consumption 

 of more that ten millions of people. 



We clip the above from a Texas journal for the 

 purpose of impressing on the mind of every reader 

 the importance of lime in all soils, not merely for the 

 production of wheat, but of all other cereal plants. 

 it is most striking to note the difference in general 

 fertility, between limestone and ordinary granite 

 lands. The average crops of the latter, especially 

 after a few years' cultivation, do not exceed a third 

 of what are grown on common calcareous soils. 

 Lime seems greatly to improve the mechanical tex- 

 ture of all cultivated lands, as well as furnish plants 

 with their appropriate mineral food. It is instruc- 

 tive to study the reasons why such soils accumulate 

 near the surface, so bountiful a supply of potash, soda, 

 magnesia, sulphur, phosphorus, chlorine, soluble flint, 

 and rich vegetable mold. Lime is not transmuted 

 into any of these substances; but this mineral serves 

 in a remarkable degree, and in more ways than one, 

 to prevent their loss in premature solution, and by 

 washing and leaching. Alumina, (the basis of pure 

 clay,) possesses similar properties to an equal and 

 perhaps greater extent. Hence, the strongest and 

 most durable soils in the world, combine the two ad- 

 vantages of lime and clay: i, e. they are calcareous 

 and argillaceous in their leading chemical and me- 

 chanical characteristics. Now, whilst all know that 

 subsoils lack vegetable and animal mo''' and that 

 this cold earth is peculiarly lifeless, still, there are 

 few who are wholly ignorant of the fact that, sub- 

 soils usually contain more pure clay and lime than 

 the pervious, and apparently richer ground above. 

 To bring lime and clay up to the light and heat of 

 the sun, to the chemical action of atmospheric gases, 

 and to the fertilizing influence of rains and dews, 

 deep plowing is the thing. 



If the intelligent reader has reason to believe that 

 his land lacks lime, from the scarcity of that mineral 

 in his neighborhood, and the softness of the water 



