232 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



May 



Mr. DiCKLVSON, of Heath, in Franklin county, 

 thought it might be well to cut all hay in feeding 

 cows. He had found a great advantage in cutting 

 clover, which sometimes has large stalks, and feed- 

 ing it with a sprinkling of meal. The people of 

 Franklin county, where good cows cost from forty 

 to fifty dollars, make butter and send it to Boston 

 once in a week, or once in two weeks, according to 

 the season ; and they generally expect a cow to 

 pay for herself in a year. Plaster does not help 

 the pastures of that county. Mr. D. had found ap- 

 ples boiled and fed with a small quantity of meal, 

 an excellent food for swine. He preferred a mix 

 ture of sweet and sour apples. He thought them 

 worth almost as much as potatoes for feeding 

 swine. 



Mr. W. J. BUCKMINSTER, of the Ploughman, had 

 found it important in feeding milk cows, to feed 

 them systematically and to satisfy them. The times 

 of feeding should be regular, with proper intervals. 

 The animal should not be kept eating all the time. 

 All animals, milk cows as well as others, require a 

 variety of food in order to keep them in good health 

 and contented ; and health is all important in order 

 to the production of good milk. The physical con- 

 dition of the cow in every respect should be care- 

 fully attended to. In feeding pigs, he also liked to 

 have a variety of food ; and he would allow them 

 when young to run out of the pen into an open field 

 if possible, allowing them to crawl through a hole 

 under the fence if possible, so that they may imag- 

 ine they are stealing away from confinement, and 

 getting into mischief. 



Mr, Sheldon, of Wilmington, said the best pos 

 sible feed for milk cows is good grass and plenty 

 of it. Every thing else is only a substitute. At 

 this time of the year he cut his hay and mixed with 

 the fine feed, water sweetened with molasses, so as 

 to give to each milk cow a half a pint of molasses 

 in a day, which will add four ounces of butter daily. 

 He liked corn for fodder, and sweet corn better 

 than any other kind. He would advise a farmer to 

 try to raise a variety of feed for cows, and he never 

 heard any complaint of any bad taste in the milk, 

 when cows were partly fed on turnips. As to hogs, 

 he believed the Almighty made them on purpose 

 to eat every thing, and that they would not thrive 

 so well on any one thing, as on every thing. Gen 

 erally, he preferred to have their food cooked, but 

 he had found that if it was fermented so as to be 

 come sour, it was q uite as good in the summer 

 time. He was sure of that, though he would not 

 once have believed it. He tried an experiment in 

 feeding fifty barrow hogs, twenty years ago ; and 

 heir keeping through the winter cost twelve and a 

 half cents a day. One of them brought him in re- 

 turn, twenty cents a day, and ten cents over. His 

 son bought a sow a little more than a year ago, for 

 fourteen dollars. Every thing fed to her was bought, 



and a strict account kept of all the cost. She was 

 fed piincipally with shorts and fine feed and scraps. 

 She was sold after fourteen months, and she, with 

 her pigs during that time, brought forty-two dol- 

 lars over and above her cost of keeping. A gentle- 

 man in Winchester had tried feeding to his cow 

 half a pint of molasses a day, in addition to her 

 other regular food, and he found her milk to in- 

 crease a pint and a half in three days. 



Mr. Stebeins, of Deerfield, thought Suffolk pigs 

 the poorest in the State. He had tried them for a 

 few years, and had made no good pork since he 

 kept them. He had tried fermentation, cooking and 

 feeding food in the natural state, and he had sue?- 

 ceeded best when he fed meal in its raw state, stirr- 

 ing in with swill at tlie time it is fed. Having tried 

 all ways, he was well satisfied. He expressed his 

 regret that farmers did not raise swine more, for 

 the purpose of making manure. They will pay for 

 their keeping, in manure, if they can have the ma- 

 terial with which to make it. 



Mr. Sheldon said he raised a great many pigs 

 to sell, and a good many of the Suffolk breed, be- 

 cause people like the looks of them ; but he always 

 told them when they came to buy, that they were 

 not worth scarcely any thing. He would not con- 

 tract to make a ton of pork from pure Suffolk swine 

 for twenty-five cents a pound. In the first place, 

 a sow will not breed, perhaps in a year, and then she 

 will have only a few, and before six months half of 

 them will be cripples. 



The President of the society, Mr. Brooks, read a 

 statement from Mr. Stebeins, of Deerfield, being 

 a record of twelve hogs brought by him to the Bos- 

 ton market. Six of them were half Suffolk, and 

 half of the Granite breed, and the other six about 

 a quarter Suffolk. Their average weight was 270 

 pounds ; gross weight, 3240 pounds. He got twelve 

 and a half cents per pound, making an aggregate 

 of $496,85. They were from nine to ten months 

 old. 



After some further rather lively discussion as to 

 the Suffolk hogs, in which Messrs. HoWAED, 

 Forbes and Buckminster participated, at nearly 

 ten o'clock the meeting adjourned. The subject 

 for the next meeting was announced to be: — 

 "Farm Economy, in relation to Farm Buildings; — 

 Farm Tools, and housing them." 



Brain of the Horse. — We have received from 

 Dr. Dadd, of this city, a beautiful colored lithograph 

 of the brain of the horse, enlarged. It is in two 

 parts— the first being the base of the brain, and 

 slioiving its nerves, and the second, the arteries at 

 the base of the brain; the whole being accompanied 

 by technical explanations. We learn by this, that 

 the average weight of the brain of the horse is ttOD 

 and ahalf pounds. 



