246 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



May 



EXTRACTS ANTt REFIiTBS. 



AMOLNT OF MILK FOR A POUND OF BUTTER. 



I wish to learn what is the common average for 

 100 quarts of milk \n pounds of butter ? And also 

 which is the niu>t prutitable to send the milk on 

 the train tf) New York, or make a good article of 

 huttcr? Th',! distunce I would have to carry my 

 milk is two and a half miles. a. c. 



I'Utsfield, Mass., March 7, 1870. 



Hemakks. — "A pint's a pound, the world 

 around." But what's a quart of milk ? We must 

 settle this question before we can decide how much 

 butter 100 quarts of milk will make. There are 

 two measures — the wine and the beer. Four 

 quarts of the one weigh nearly as much as five 

 quarts of the other. The legal gallon of the United 

 States, which is the wine measure, contains 231 

 cubic inches, and weighs, of distilled water, 8.3389 

 pounds; the beer measure contains 282 inches, 

 and weighs 10 pounds. Hence a beer quart weighs 

 2^ pounds and a wine quart 2 pounds \\ ounces. 

 We suppose that in this country the beer measure 

 is generally used for milk, and in England the 

 wine measure. Uniformity in this as in all other 

 weights and measures is very desirable, and as the 

 ■wine measure has been legalized by our General 

 Government, and by the legislature of Massachu- 

 setts, we hope it will be generally adopted through- 

 out the country, by dairymen as well as others. 



From our own experience in butter making, we 

 are inclined to the opinion that "book farmers," 

 or those who base their opinion on published state- 

 ments, generally over-estimate the amount of but- 

 ter obtained from one hundred quarts, or any 

 other given quantity of milk. People are much 

 more willing to report successes than failures ; 

 large crops and large yields, than small ones. Mr. 

 Buckminster, of Framingham, Mass., who raised 

 the Devon stock for sale, asserted some years ago 

 that four quarts of milk from one of his sows had 

 made a pound of butter. Great products from 

 Alderney or Jersey cows have also been reported 

 by owners who wished to sell them at fancy prices. 

 But such butter making is seldom realized by "out- 

 back" farmers. 



Mr. Horsfall, an English gentleman, who exper- 

 imented in the use of cooked food and high feed- 

 ing, and who kept his cows beef-fat, selling a part 

 of his milk and making butter from a part, tested 

 the matter of butter making pretty thoroughly. 

 He repeatedly tried the experiment with sixteen 

 "quarts" — wine measure we suppose — and the 

 amount of butter from the 16 quarts varied from 

 24 to 27.J ounces on the various trials with the 

 milk from his high-fed cows. Allowing 26 ounces 

 as the average, 10 quarts or 20 pounds 13 ounces 

 of milk were required for a pound of butter. On 

 inquiry among his neighbors who kept their cows 

 poorer, he found that a quart at a milking was al- 

 lowed for a pound of butter a week — or fourteen 

 (small) quarts for a pound of butter. A very care- 

 ful statement was made some years since by a 

 Pennsylvania dairyman, who said that milk varied 



so much that it was very difiicult to say how much 

 milk would make a pound of butter, on an aver- 

 age, but from "common cows," he calculated on 

 from nine to eleven quarts, or from eighteen to 

 twenty-two pounds of milk for one of butter. 

 This corresponds very nearly with the statement 

 of Mr. G. C. Bidwell, one of our subscribers in 

 Rockingham, Vt., to whom we put your inquiry, 

 who said that his rule was eight large quarts, or 

 twenty pounds, but that it would vary considera- 

 bly with the season, &c. Now if we allow 20 

 pounds of milk to one of butter, 100 quarts large 

 measure would make 12^ pounds of butter, and 

 100 quarts of small measure nearly 10^ pounds. 



Of the profit on milk sent to New York you 

 must judge from th« price paid and other circum- 

 stances, with which you must be better informed 

 than ourselves. 



■WITCH GRASS. 



I have read the Farmer for a few years, but 

 have not yet seen anything on destroying barn or 

 witch grass. I am not a farmer, but till a small 

 garden, in which I have been much troubled to 

 keep down said grass. Any hints on the subject 

 will be gratefully received. Seth Edson. 



North Bridgewater, Mass., March 20, 1870. 



Remarks. — Barn and witch grass are very dif- 

 ferent things. Witch grass in cultivated land is a 

 troublesome weed. If a garden patch was well 

 stocked with it, we should prefer to plant with 

 corn or potatoes one year, manuring in the hill, 

 and covering if possible with earth in which there 

 were few or no witch grass roots, and then as often 

 as the grass shows its head — we mark this in italics, 

 because every word means all it says — cut it off 

 or pull it up, no matter how often a sharp hoe and 

 the thumb and fingers have to be used,— remem- 

 bering that the roots will extend several times as 

 far as the leaf is allowed to project above the sur- 

 face. If the land and the season is tolerably dry, 

 witch grass may be hoed to death in a single sum- 

 mer. We do not say you will do it, because we do 

 not know anything about the size of your bump of 

 perseverance. 



But if you must have garden stuflF this year, 

 fork — not spade — the ground finely and throw out 

 the roots as carefully as though they were parti- 

 cles of gold, collect them in a heap, and when 

 partly dry burn them, coalpit fashion, covering 

 with sods and rubbish, and if no unburned roots 

 remain, you may use the ashes with advantage. 

 Either mode, merely tried, will fail ; either, thor- 

 oughly do7ie will succeed. Don't you ever say 

 again that the Farmer never told you how to de- 

 stroy witch grass in a garden. 



CEMENT FLOORS FOR HORSE STALLS. 



Will some one inform me the best way of mak- 

 ing a horse stable floor of stone and cement, so 

 that all the liquid manure mav be saved ? e. t. 



Orleans 4- Corners, N. T., 1870. 



Remarks. — The importance of saving all the 

 manure, the desirableness of a good bed for the 

 horse, the readiness with which ammonia is 



