MANAGEMEKT OF COWS li^ THE STABLE. 175 



ensilage three times a day, and in the morning and at 

 night about live pounds of shorts during the winter. In 

 summer the cows are kept to pasture. The cows are 

 watered in winter by turning them out in squads of 

 about fifteen. While fed this amount of ensilage, the 

 cows require but little water. While the cows go dry 

 before calving, no shorts or grain is fed. By long ex- 

 periment in feeding on this farm, it is found that the 

 best and largest flow of milk is obtained when shorts alone 

 are fed with ensilage. About thirty acres of corn are 

 planted, ten acres of which are used for soiling and the 

 balance made in ensilage. About two-thirds of this was 

 sweet corn, which was allowed to ear, and the corn 

 was used for canning, the stalks being made into ensilage. 

 The corn is drilled in rows four feet apart, and harrowed 

 with a smoothing harrow till six inches high, when the 

 cultivator is used. The corn is cut with the reaper and 

 left in bundles to be loaded upon the wagon, hauled to 

 the silo and cut. The cutting is done with a six-horse 

 power engine. Fifty tons are cut and put in the silo in 

 a day. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



MANAGEMENT OF COWS IN THE STABLE. 



Milk is one of the most actively absorbent of all 

 substances. It acquires most easily the odors which es- 

 cape from adjacent objects. When the author was in 

 Europe some years ago and visited a noted French dairy 

 at Isegny, he found the. stable windows filled with pots 

 of growing roses, and a portion of the yard in front of 

 the stable fenced off from the rest was occupied by beds 

 of the standard roses peculiar to French gardens, which 

 bear large heads of profuse bloom at the top of a single 



