96 



NEW ENGLAND FARI^IER. 



Feb. 



said his wife had cburned all day, and after he 

 got boma he took bold and churned till ten 

 o'cloc^k, and the butter did not come then. I 

 told him to keep hia cows as fat as mine and 

 butter would come in half an hour. 



We had green peas by the middle of last 

 June, and new potatoes the last of June. The 

 latter part of July we dug at the rate of a 

 bushel from twelve hills of the early Goodrich. 

 These were manured in the hill with hog ma- 

 nure and a little phosphate of lime. After 

 the peas and potatoes were off we ?owed Eng- 

 lish purple top turnips, from which we raided 

 twenty bushels. We had on the same piece 

 about thirty bushels of potatoes besides peas ; 

 and let me say here, that light as this soil is, 

 I have never .seen corn roil in the driest of 

 times, when I have seen it suffer on moist, 

 clayey soils. The fact is, the roots can get 

 down deeper into the ground, and the soil 

 absorbs moisture rapidly from the dews, when 

 from the clayey soils it is repelled. 



I shall have to put an addition on to my 

 barn this spring. I was just about crowded 

 out last fall. The present barn has supplied 

 the wants of the owners a number of years. 



I wish to make another statement, that un- 

 less the skin of a cow is kept in a healthy con- 

 dition she cannot give healthy milk, nor good 

 butter. A healthy skin is indispensable. 

 Through the pores of the skin a large amount 

 of eiiete matter is thrown off. If these pores 

 are not kept open, this matter is thrown back 

 into the system, and goes off by other secre- 

 tory vessels, which are as likely to be the 

 milk glands as any others. The skin becomes 

 dry, scaly and itchy, and the cows are con- 

 tinually rubbing and licking themselves. The 

 grooming of tbc cow remedies this to a great 

 extent ; dry feed increases it ; oleaginous 

 food tends to increase it ; and this might have 

 been the cause of disea^^e in the bags of Dr. 

 Loring's cows. Roots have an excellent effect 

 on the skin of all animals, to which man is no 

 exception. Tiios. Whitaker. 



Needham, Mass., Dec, 1869. 



FABM STOCK IN WINTER—WASTE OF 

 ANIMAJj HEAT. 



There is no farmer's wife in New England 

 so ignorant of the simple laws of nature as to 

 attempt to bake rf loaf of bread with the oven 

 doors open. No thoughtful woman would 

 waste fuel in that way. And yet, are not 

 some of tho practices of farmers quite as 

 wasteful ? Take for example, the loss of ani- 

 mal heat resulting from insufficient protection 

 of stock in winter. It is well known that in 

 all warm blooded animals, heat is generated 

 by some mysterious process of combustion 

 which is sustained by the food consume^J, and 

 in its absence, by the adipose or fatty tissue 

 of the body. When the temperature of the 

 atmosphere is lower than that of the body, 

 heat radiates or passes off constantly. If the 



air is very cold, the radiation of heat is very 

 rapid, and unless the supply of heat is kept 

 up, the temperature of the body would soon 

 correspond with that of the air. It is very 

 clear, thon— the quantity of heat-producing 

 food necessary to maintain an uniform tem- 

 perature of the body being in exact proportion 

 to the loss of heat by its passing off in the air, 

 — that a much larger quantity of such food is 

 necessary when the animal is exposed to ex- 

 treme cold than if it is well protected. It is 

 the fuel which, burning night and day, keeps 

 the creature warm. We do not say this as 

 anything new. On the contrary it is well 

 known to every farmer. The only thing pecu- 

 liar or strange in the matter is that the prac- 

 tice of so many farmers should exhibit a strik- 

 ing indifference on ihe subject. Many neglect 

 to furnish warm quarters for their stock, and 

 others who have comfortable barns and sta- 

 bles, keep stock all or a part of the time "out 

 in the cold." 



We once knew a farmer in comfortable cir- 

 cumstances, of such general good intelligence 

 that he was chosen to represent the town in 

 the "General Assembly" for several years in 

 succession, who gave his sheep no protection 

 whatever, not even an open shed, in winter, 

 because they were "supplied by nature with a 

 fleece to keep them warm." On another farm, 

 one of t!he best in Windsor county, we have 

 seen milch cows lying on ice and snow in a 

 barnyard much exposed to wind, without even 

 a little straw to lie upon on winter nights, 

 when the mercury ranged from ten to twenty 

 degrees below zero, when a warm stable stood 

 vacant. 



We desire especially to have it understood 

 that we do not advocate the system of con- 

 stant housing in close quarters, deprive(J of 

 exercise in the open air, which, with high feed, 

 is destroying the constitution of so many herds 

 and flocks of breeding animals. Nothing can 

 be more odious to the friend of improvement 

 in stock than this pernicious system. There 

 is a proper medium course between the two 

 extremes. The loss resulting from undue ex- 

 posure to cold is three fold. Extra keeping 

 is necessary to maintain the condition — here 

 is a loss of forage. With warm quarters 

 there would be a gain of flesh instead 

 of loss, without extra feed — here is a loss of 

 condition. Constant suffering from cold ex- 

 hausts and enfeebles the nervous system, upon 

 which depend the healthful performance of 

 all the functions of the body — here is a loss 

 of health. 



If there is some special drain upon the sys- 

 tem, such as the labor of horses or the pro- 

 duction of milk by cows, which requires extra 

 food, the necessity for protection from cold is 

 much greater, for the animal heat must be sus- 

 tained first. If that requires nearly all the 

 food, the remainder will be insufficient for 

 work on milk, which must be made up out of 

 the stores in the body. 



