184 



NEW ENGLA.ND FARMER. 



April 



rots or any otlier green food, or even wetted hay, 

 is less subject to heaves, than vyhen fed on dry 

 hay alone. It is not true that when a horse is 

 fed in part on carrots, that shells of oats and 

 pieces of cut hay will not be found in his dung. I 

 have fed a colt this winter, (coining three years 

 old) a portion of the time, on cut hay, with one 

 peck of carrots daily, and a part of the time on 

 cut hay alone, and can discover no differences in 

 his excrement, it being equally chappy when fed 

 on hay and carrots as when fed on hay only. — 

 The statement that 50 per cent is saved, by cook- 

 ing meal for hogs, is beyond my experience, which 

 is not more than 25 per cent, saving in cooking 

 corn, rye, barley, or oat meal, and 15 per cent, 

 saving in cooking roots. You will find a state- 

 ment of all I know as to the comparative value of 

 good English hay, Indian meal, fiat turnips, car- 

 rots, and good oat straw in my letter to the Wor- 

 cester county societies' committee on feeding ; 

 published in the supplement to their transactions 

 of 1852, page 29. 



In the trials there detailed, I make five pounds of 

 flat turnips equal to one pound of hay, three pounds 

 of carrots equal to one pound of hay, and one 

 pound of Indian meal equal to four pounds of hay ; 

 the trials were made with good English hay, and 

 were for milk. In these trials you will perceive 

 that three tons of carrots are equal to one ton of 

 English hay ; therefore hay at ten dollars a ton, 

 would leave carrots worth three dollars and thir- 

 ty-three cents the ton. You will find in the same 

 supplement, page 32d, a letter from the late J. 

 W^ Lincoln, in which he says he gained one 

 quart of milk, daily, by feeding one peck of car- 

 rots ; allowing carrots to weigh 50 pounds the 

 bushel, or 12^ pounds the peck, and milk to be 

 worth on the fiirra 2t cents the quart, and hay 

 ten dollars the ton, the amount would stand thus : 

 Eour pecks or one bushel of carrots equal four 

 quarts of milk at 2^ cents, would be ten cents 

 the bushel for carrots ; 40 bushels of carrots to 

 the ton would bo ten times forty-four dollars the 

 ton for carrots, and to this the daily saving of four 

 pounds of hay, the hay value of 12i pounds of 

 carrots,|hay at one-half a cent the pound, and you 

 have $4.02 as the value of one ton of carrots, or 

 69 cents the ton more than I made them worth in 

 my trial. 



I have but little experience as to the value of 

 the beet family, having made but one trial, and 

 that with the mangel wurtzel. On the 15th of 

 November, 1833, I commenced feeding a steer 

 43 months old, and weighing 1205 pounds live 

 weight. I fed him on 30 pounds of good English 

 hay daily for 30 days ; he gained in weight in the 

 30 days, 00.^ pounds. I then fed him 30 days 

 on 24 pounds of hay, and 30 pounds of mangel 

 wurtzel daily, and he gained in 30 days 62| 

 pounds, showing 36 pounds of mangel wurtzel to 

 be equal to 12 pounds of hay. I then fed 30 days 

 on 30 pounds of luiy, and 108 pounds of mangel 

 wurtzel daily, and the steer gained in the 30 days 

 125 pounds, or about 4 pounds daily, or twice as 

 much as whgn fed on 30 pounds of hay alone, 

 which ^goes to show that 108 pounds of mangel 

 wurtzel are equal to 30 pounds of hay, or that 3 

 pounds of this root is worth one pound of good 

 English hay, which I believe to be about the 

 truth . 

 Your query as to whether drains cut so deep 



and near together as recommended by the Wor- 

 cester committee, is a just one, and worthy of 

 consideraticm. In some favorable situations, it 

 may no doubt prove a good investment, but gener- 

 ally in this State, land suital)le for cultivation is 

 t:)0 cheap to pay for tliorough draining. If land 

 I)e drained at all, th')rough draining is in the end 

 cheapest, and you cannot drain thoroughly with- 

 out cutting drains deep, and frequent, for the rea- 

 sons stated in the Worcester county committee's 

 report. There is a query, however, before yours 

 to be settled, which is, whether in our dry cli- 

 mate, draining (except it be our peaty swamp 

 meadows) be recommended afall, whether the ad- 

 vantage gained by draining our retentive uplands, 

 wet in a season, will not be lost in a dry season, is 

 a question not yet decided in this country. I have 

 doubts upon this question, and we need practice 

 and experience to determine the facts. There are 

 good reasons for draining in England under their 

 drizzly, rainy sky, that do not exist in our coun- 

 try. Ten years ago, I cut a drain 3i feet deep, 

 and six feet wide, througli a piece of retentive clay 

 loam land about twenty rods long; last summer the 

 grass 20 feet each side of the drain evidently suf- 

 fered more from the drought than in other parts of 

 the field. This leads me to doubt the utility of in- 

 discriminate draining, as some ardent gentlemen 

 recommend. The profits on Mr. Bailie's farm 

 was probably $100 or $150 more than stated by 

 him, he being an old-fashioned farmer and very 

 conscientious in his statements ; he would, no 

 doubt, make the income from the f;xrm quite as 

 small as it really was. The farm, though large 

 in acres, is small in value, a considerable portion 

 of it being -poor, sandy land, producing but httle. 

 Very respectfully yours, John Brooks. 

 Princeton, Feb. 10, 1853. 



GLEANINGS. 



Warm Stables. — The Valley Farmer says the 

 owner of seven horses, who kept them in a warm 

 stable, ventilated near the eves, stated to him that 

 they ate only two- thirds the quantity of food in a 

 given time that they required in the same time in 

 common, open stables, and the horses were in bet- 

 ter condition than they had ever been before. 



TuE Oats Crop. — The Gcrmanlown Telegraph 

 thinks the proper time for sowing oats, is as soon 

 as by the absence of frost the earth can be plowed 

 and put in good order ; that the early sown, 

 makes the most grain and best quality. Right, 

 undoubtedly. lie says, too, that agricultural as- 

 sociations are multiplying rapidly in Pennsylva- 

 nia. Prof. Wilkinson, in the same paper, announ- 

 ces his intention of discontinuing his Institute at 

 Mount Airy, on the first of March. It has exist- 

 ed eight years — had 217 pupils, among whom 

 were but/our sons of farmers — "the latter think- 

 ing that they are competent to educate their own 

 sons." A large majority of these pupils have 

 embarked in, or design to make, agriculture their 

 profession. 



Skinning a Pear Tree. — W. S. Lyles, in the 

 Soil of the South, Columbus, Ga., says he stript a 



