LATE IN THE FALL. 85 



on corn-fodder and cabbage-leaves ? Will you turn them into 

 fall feed ? Will you put them on mowing lands ? Will you 

 feed them in the fields, or will you not ? This, my friends, is a 

 pretty important question. I will acknowledge that it is an 

 open question — this question of fall feed for dairy or any other 

 stock. I am going to tell my own experience again, and any 

 other man may tell his. I suppose many of you are situated 

 just exactly as I am. I have a large farm, — about five hundred 

 acres of land, — and I desire to make it as profitable as possible. 

 Now, from the middle of September until the middle of Novem- 

 ber, I have forty cows generally at work, producing one of the 

 great staples of the farm. What can I do ? I have a cabbage 

 field, from which I sold, during the summer months, perhaps a 

 few thousand heads, and the leaves are left. Would you de- 

 pend upon them ? I think not, if there is any fall work to do. 

 You cannot feed them on Swedish turnips then. It is not good 

 economy to use your hay-mow in the middle of September. 

 What will you do ? There is a field covered with rowen — half 

 a ton of grass, or maybe less. There is a good chance for your 

 cows. Forty-five cows ought to earn, anywhere near a good 

 milk market, from fifteen to twenty dollars a day, if they are in 

 good condition. It is undoubtedly profitable to feed your mow- 

 ing lands in this state of affairs. I^agree that the crop next 

 year will be reduced, unless you cultivate your grass land. It 

 must be laid down as a rule, that the cultivation of grass is like 

 the cultivation of potatoes, or rye, or barley, or any other crop. 

 After having cropped to their utmost capacity the mowing lands, 

 cultivate those lands, as you do corn and grain lands. That is 

 the rule which I have adopted, and I cannot afford to adopt any 

 other ; and, my friends, I have begun to think that the whole- 

 sale statement that cattle should never be fed upon mowing 

 lands is simply an encouragement to second-rate farming. I 

 may be mistaken ; I may be wrong about it ; but I desire gen- 

 tlemen to think of it one moment, and consider whether they 

 had not better adopt this method of feeding their cattle, with 

 the expectation that they have got to cultivate so much more 

 land, always remembering that it is no use to feed a profitless 

 animal, whether in the pasture, in the barn or in the hay field. 

 That is my theory in regard to feeding grass lands, and I 

 think it is as much a part of the management and carrying on 



