478 [Assembly 



starch. Hogs cousume more of the cooked than the raw, but 

 they fatten much faster. As many as forty of my neighbors have 

 followed my advice in this cooking the food as far as it is possi- 

 ble, and they all agree in the profit of it. Of Indian corn, it is 

 found that eighteen and one quarter pounds weight well cooked, 

 are more^ profitable to the hog than fifty pounds weight of the raw 

 corn. One of those farmers reports that his pork so raised cost 

 him but four cents and a quarter or even less, while that fed 

 with the raw cost him from thirteen to fifteen cenxs the pound. 

 I recently used two pairs of large oxen to work on my farm ; 

 they had to travel about eighteen miles a day in drawing (each 

 pair) about one ton weight half that day's work. I fed them on 

 corn stalks cut small and heated by pouring hot water on them 

 with salt, in a barrel or hogshead over night. Next morning 

 the corn stalks were swelled to their size when green. I added 

 mash on top. They always relished their feed more than the 

 raw, kept in flesh and strength througliout the summer, and I 

 sold them for two hundred dollars the pair. 



I have experimented rather largely for the last four years, in 

 manures on my farm, not only with all known special manures 

 but all others, particularly with salt muck from the meadows 

 near me. I bought meadow land convenient to me for five dol- 

 lars some acres, up to ten dollars for others, per acre. I dug out 

 the muck in order to make ditches as well as manure. I have 

 drawn on to my farm from ten to fifteen hundred wagon loads of 

 this muck, and have made it capital manure. 



I left it exposed to frost one winter, then I added chloride of 

 lime and carbonate of soda made from the refuse salt from pack- 

 ers of pork and hams, and decomposed by lime. This salt con- 

 tains some oleaginous matter. I put about four bushels of these, 

 mixed to 128 cubic feeet (one cord) of the muck which had been 

 exposed one winter to frost. The muck is a rapid and great 

 absorl>ent and deodorizer, so that it takes up and retains the 

 ammonia of all these matters. I also dug a gulley in the stable 

 three or four feet deep and as wide. I used Rosendale cement 

 to make the bottom water-tight. I put into it muck, and over 

 that litter. The urine of the oxen passed through the litter 



