14 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



adequate to supply the wants of the school, and that it has 

 been found necessary to purchase hay and to hire pasturage to 

 keep even the number of cows already there. The experi- 

 ments made under the direction of this committee, though 

 necessarily limited in extent, are of great interest. They 

 appear in the following 



RE PORT. 



The undersigned, Committee on Stock, have attended to their duty as 

 diligently as circumstances would permit. They have charge of all 

 the stock of the farm, including farming utensils. Among the live 

 stock under their care they have had thirty-five swine and twenty- 

 three milch cows. The swine were valued, on the first day of April last, 

 at $575, and have mostly been sold, and their places made good by 

 their young descendants ; and their number had increased, on the first 

 of December, to seventy-five, and their value decreased to $558. We 

 have now on hand in value, of swine, within $17, as much as in April 

 last, and a considerable amount of pork has been sold. The cows 

 have produced, up to the first day of December, 6,4694- gallons of 

 milk and 511 pounds of veal. 



The relation between the quantity and value of food consumed by 

 dairy cows, and the milk, butter or cheese produced, has never been 

 satisfactorily settled in this State ; and although we may believe that 

 cows in general consume food in proportion to their live weight, and 

 yield milk or some other product in proportion to the food consumed, 

 we have no satisfactory proof of the fact. In order to elicit some 

 information upon this subject, the undersigned obtained the consent, in 

 June last, of the superintending committee, to make such experiments 

 with the milch cows as they should deem expedient. In pursuance of 

 this consent, they directed Mr. White, the farmer, to weigh the milk 

 of each cow night and morning daily, and to weigh each cow on the 

 evening of the tenth and morning of the eleventh day of each month ; 

 but owing to the hurry of the Avork on the farm and other circum- 

 stances not under his control, he omitted to execute the order, and 

 the experiments are limited to the weighing of the milk for ten days, 

 from the twentieth to the thirtieth of June, and for ten days, from the 

 twentieth to the thirtieth of August, and the weighing of the cows on 

 the morning of the eleventh and tin' evening of the tenth of June ami 

 the evening of the thirty-first of Augusl ami the morning of the first of 

 September — too short a time to afford a hasis for conclusive deduc- 

 tions. They however afford, as will he seen by the tallies, some 

 useful information. 



