400 THE DAIRY^IAX'S MANUAL. 



the side of a hill, in an excavation of which the base- 

 ment stable is placed. The basement is of stone, and 

 nine feet high. The barn is twenty feet high above the 

 basement, eighty feet long and twenty-eight feet wide. 

 The yard is surrounded with a stone wall, and a manure 

 pit is dug under the center of the building, large enough, 

 to back a wagon into. No manure is kept in the yard, 

 which is thus always clean and neat; but it is raked into 

 a wagon, which is backed into the pit to receive it every 

 morning, and carted away. Nothing is thus left to taint 

 the air around the stable, and to vitiate the purity of the 

 milk. At the left of the yard, adjoining the stable, is a 

 spring-house, in which the milk is rapidly cooled, and 

 kept cool until the time for shipment. Behind the 

 Gpring-house, and immediately at one end of the barn, is 

 the pit for storing brewers' grains, of which a jwrtion 

 of the feed consists. These grains, purchased from the 

 breweries, contain a large portion of corn meal, which is 

 now extensively used in brewing, and are both nutritious 

 and wholesome food. It is a mistake to su23pose that 

 fresh brewers' grains are unhealthf ul or improper food, or 

 tend to produce any but the best of milk. Grains are 

 simply crushed malt which has been deprived of a part 

 of its sugar by the process of mashing, and contain, when 

 in a dry condition, only very little less milk-producing 

 nutriment than the barley from which they were made, 

 the loss, besides the sugar, being chiefly starch or carbo- 

 naceous matter. The daily ration given to the cows upon 

 these milk farms is usually half a bushel of grains, in 

 which there is a considerable portion of corn meal, and 

 six to eight quarts of dry corn meal, with as much hay 

 as they care to eat. Where no grains are fed the ration 

 is eight to twelve quarts of corn meal with hay. The 

 pit in which the grains are stored is a deep cellar walled 

 with stone and cement and covered with a roof. A door 

 from th'j bottom of the j^it opens into the stable, and 



