184 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



[December ' 



through the winter with little aim on the 

 part of the feeder, beyond barely carrying the 

 animal tlirougli alive ; and where sucli a 

 course has been pursued, there has always 

 been more or less lo.ss of life as well as loss of 

 flesh, and an absence of all forms of profit 

 whatever. 



When the country was first settled, and 

 there were no mowing fields of good, sweet 

 hay from whicli to secure a winter supply ; 

 when the only winter fodder was the straw 

 of ripened grain and the interior grasses of 

 our wet meadows, and when the profit from 

 stock husbandry was necessarily pretty much 

 confined to summer pasturage, there was 

 a better excuse for such a practice as was tliis 

 winter system of partial starvation. 



On a large proportion of the farms of New 

 England at the present time, the cattle are 

 kept in quite as good condition in winter 

 as during the summer season. This is par- 

 ticularly true of tlie herds kept upon milk 

 farms where there is a daily sale of milk to go 

 to the cities or villages. Farmers who are 

 receiving a daily income from their stock are 

 less fearful of daily expenditure for good, 

 nourishing food. Compared with the past, 

 there is now little to complain of regarding 

 the treatment of most of the cattle in the 

 country. Tbe farmers generally feed well, as 

 they understand that term. But feeding ani- 

 mals well, in such a manner that they will 

 produce abundantly of milk, tlesh, growth, 

 work, or fat, is something that requires a 

 good deal of thought, study, and considerable 

 practice. 



The chemists are informing us something 

 of the relative proportions iu which the seve- 

 ral food elements should be mixed, how much 

 grain it will be found most profitable to feed 

 with certain amounts of coarser fodders, and 

 they are giving us tables showing the relative 

 chemical and food values of most of the com- 

 mon forms of food used, but they cannot, with 

 their experiments or tables, make a good 

 feeder of one who has no more idea of feed- 

 ing than to merely stuff an animal's manger 

 full of food one or more times per day. We 

 knew of a barn full of cattle that were fed al- 

 most nothing the past winter, but good, mer- 

 chantable upland hay, grown by high cult-ire 

 and liberal maniu-iug. The cattle were kept 

 warm, were nicely bedded, the stables „were 

 cleaned often, and water was freely provided, 

 yet the cattle came out thin in the spring, 

 and made but little growth. The ditticuUy 

 in tliis case, as in many others which readers 

 of the Farmer may be familiar with, was, 

 that the good hay was given far too freely, or 

 certainly too much at a time. There was 

 plenty of hay in the barn, and the attendant 

 wanted to make a good showing of bis skill in 

 stock feeding, so he tilled the racks and man- 

 gers full at each feeding. At first the cattle 

 coming in from a short pasture would eat 

 heartily, but, with little or no exercise there 

 was less food called for, and the quantity 

 given was greater than the system required. 

 Of course a portion would be left uneaten 

 after the whole had been picked over, and the 

 choicest portions taken out. The rest was 

 breathed over till nothing nothing would eat 

 it, when it was liauled under foot, trodden 

 upon and wasted. The fact is, good English 

 hay used as bedding for idle animals, will al 



most surely spoil them if they can get free 

 access to it with their mouths. 



"Under-feeding" is one of the charges 

 brought by the agent of the Society for the 

 Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, against 

 owners or attendants of animals, but there 

 are a great many animals seriously injured, 

 and of course abused, from overfeeding, or, 

 at least, from very injudicious feeding, which 

 the agents are hardly likely to note. We 

 have always found it more necessary to cau- 

 tion hired help against over-feeding than 

 against under-feeding. Hired help do not 

 have the bills to pay, and so have no pecuni- 

 ary interest in an economical system of feed- 

 ing. Then it is less labor to feed bountifully 

 two or three times a day, than to give a little 

 at a time, and then to notice how the animals 

 seem to feel. A good observer will know, 

 the moment he steps inside the feeding-room, 

 whether his animals are sufllcien:)ly fed or 

 whether they are still hungry, by their ap- 

 pearance. Cattle should have enough, and 

 should then be lefc by themselves. They 

 should have regular hours for feeding, and 

 then they well know what to depend upon. 



Animals that are fed well, and at regular 

 intervals, will rarely call for food except at 

 usual feeding hours. Animals very readily 

 acquire habits, and they will adapt themselves 

 in a considerable degree to the customs of 

 their keepers. It would be ditlicult to deter- 

 mine from the practice of different feeders 

 whether cattle will do better upon two or 

 three regular meals per day, for there might 

 be many herds instanced that have done well 

 by either system. We have for many years 

 made it a practice to feed cattle but two 

 meals per day, one in the morning, the other 

 in the afternoon, aiming to divide'the twenty- 

 four, hours as nearly as convenient, into two 

 equal periods, though the time between night 

 and morning is usually a little longer than 

 the time between morning and evening. A 

 cow's stomach is so constructed that she can 

 easily take enough good food into it to last 

 her twelve hours, and we have long been of 

 the opinion that food is more thoroughly di- 

 gested when but two meals are given. 



It is certainly a great convenience on a 

 dairy-farm, especially in winter, to have the 

 feeding all done at the two ends of a day, so 

 that the middle of the day, while the sun 

 shines, can be used for other purposes. Many 

 families in the country have but two regular 

 meals per day during the short days of winter, 

 and cattle, with their large stomachs de- 

 signed specially for laying away large quan- 

 tities of food to be masticated at their leisure, 

 can certainly accommodate themselves to] two 

 meals per day as easily as can human beings 

 with their relatively smaller digestive organs. 

 In winter, when farm teams cannot work 

 much more than six or seven hours per day, 

 they can be changed off from three to two 

 meals per day, and will do quite as well as if 

 fed the noon mejil. With but two meals per 

 day there is less danger from over-feeding 

 than if digestion be disturbed by a midday 

 feed before the morning meal has been prop- 

 erly disposed of by the digestive organs. 



But we would not have our readers under- 

 stand that we recommend the practice of 

 giving all the food of one meal at a single feed- 

 ing ; on the contrary, we would give it at 



three or four different times, say twenty 

 minutes or half an hour apart. The idea is 

 to have the feeding continuous, till the meal 

 is finished, then give no more till the next 

 meal, some eight or ten hours later. A cow 

 or an ox will occupy from one to tvv'o hours in 

 eating a breakfast or supper of coarse, dry 

 fgdder. Watering, like feeding, may become 

 somewhat a matter of habit as to the number 

 of times and quautity taken. We prefer 

 watering after each meal, l)ut, in practice, 

 find that many cattle will drink heartily but 

 once per day. A good feeder will watch his 

 animals and learn their wants, and endeavor 

 to supply them, but never to over-supply. — 

 Boston New EriQland Farmer. 



THE RATIONAL METHOD OF TREE- 

 PRUNING. 



In this new world little attention has been 

 given to the pruning of trees. With our am- 

 ple domain, giving space for all the trees, we 

 have left them to grow as they might. Our 

 pruning, where it has not been of that heroic 

 and decisive sort which lays the axe at the 

 root of the trees and cuts them to the ground, 

 has been of a hap-liazard kind, based upon no 

 system and directed by no science. Each one 

 -has cut and trimmed according to his own 

 notion or whim. If the limb of a tree has 

 been in the way, becomes an obstruction to 

 the walk, or intercepted some desirable look- 

 out, it has been lopped oil", usually by what- 

 ever instrument convenience would supply 

 and in a manner to require the least exertion. 

 Tree-growers and the better class of farmers 

 have been somewhat more painstaking in 

 their methods. They have removed or short- 

 ened limbs with some study of after effects, 

 and have so performed their work as to se- 

 cure, if possible, the proper healing of the 

 wounds which they have made. But in most 

 cases the trees have been left to themselves or 

 have been lopped with reckless carelessness. 

 It seems to have been generally thought that 

 they would bear any amount of mishap and 

 the utmost severity of treatment. They have 

 been regarded rather as dead than living mat- 

 ter, and their delicate and sensitive organiza- 

 tions, instead of being guarded and protected 

 with sympathizing care, have been left to be 

 the prey of neglect and violence. 



The result has been that many of our forest 

 trees have fallen victims to decay when proper 

 pruning would have insured their healthy 

 growth to full stature, and many trees planted 

 by the roadside or the dwelling for the pur- 

 pose of shade or ornament, have become de- 

 formed and short-lived in consequence of 

 improper pruning. 



With the rising interest in trees and tree- 

 planting in America the importance of prun- 

 ing and its proper method ought to receive 

 attention as a branch of forestry. The object 

 of pruning trees, forest trees especially, is to 

 secure the largest and healthiest, and, there- 

 fore, the most profitable growth of timber 

 upon any given area of ground, and experi- 

 ence has shown that b}' a rational system of 

 pruning a forest may be made to yield a much 

 larger product than when left to itself as is 

 ordinarily the case with us. 



Hitherto there has been no adequate trea- 

 tise on the subject of tree pruning in the Eng- 



