256 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Water is as cheap as anything we can give our hogs, and that, 

 with good food and clean quarters, will give us healthy hogs. 



Mr. Wheeler. I would like to ask Mr. Burnett if he 

 has had any experience in feeding buttermilk to pigs, d.nd if 

 so, with what result? The reason I ask is, that in the but- 

 ter factories there is a good deal of this product, and in some 

 places it is not turned to any account. I know that in my 

 immediate vicinity one has been recently started, and in con- 

 versation a few days ago with the superintendent I asked 

 him what he was doing with the buttermilk. He said he 

 had been selling it to the farmers along back for a cent a gal- 

 lon ; but they did not take it any more, and he had to open 

 his sluice and let it go into the drain. Since I have been 

 here some one connected with a large creamery, where they 

 are making, I presume, two or three hundred pounds of but- 

 ter a day, has made the same statement, — that they had to let 

 that product go to waste. I remember some time within the 

 last year reading an article in a journal that I usually con- 

 sider good authority, that is, the paper with which Dr. 

 Nichols is connected, "The Journal of Chemistry," on this 

 point, which stated that buttermilk as food for hogs was not 

 a perfect food, that the tendency was to constipation, but 

 that that was remedied wholly by a small addition of linseed 

 meal ; and I think the article gave the proper proportions of 

 linseed meal and buttermilk to make the food nearly or quite 

 equivalent to new milk. Now, I would like to ask Mr. Bur- 

 nett if he can give us any information on that point ? 



Mr. Burnett. I am glad to have that question asked me. 

 I regret that I cannot answer it more definitely, but I will 

 say that from experience I have found buttermilk not a com- 

 plete food. Knowing the chemical analysis of buttermilk, I 

 have always thought that it is, or should be, of the same 

 value as skim milk, gallon for o-allon. Yet it is not a com- 

 plete food. Mine goes into my skim milk, and that perhaps 

 is diluted so much that I really cannot give you any practi- 

 cal experience in feeding buttermilk, and nothing but but- 

 termilk, except one test which I tried some years ago, in 

 which case it was not successful. But there is no question 

 in my mind that it can be utilized to very great advantage 

 by our New England creameries. 



