82 Soiling. 



the hired girl in the parlor. How many times are 

 farmers heard to say : " Oh, my cows are quite as able 

 to help themselves as I am to help them. If the 

 best pasture I can give them is not good enough, 

 they can go without. " That is the way we generally 

 go about solving the soiling question, and many of 

 us never get beyond that point. The extra labor of 

 soiling over pasturing is greatly magnified. Thirty- 

 six head of cattle may be-soiled at an additional cost 

 for extra labor of $i per day, 3 cents per head. My 

 own experience in soiling twelve head of milch 

 cows is that all the extra labor aside from growing 

 the soiling crop did not require more than three 

 hours a day extra labor, and the work was accom- 

 plished by a boy fifteen years old. I cannot give 

 exact cost of growing the crop, etc., as no minute 

 was made of it at the time, but I feel perfectly safe 

 in the above estimate. Let us see in what this extra 

 labor consists : plowing the land, seed, and time to 

 put it in, cutting and delivering the same to the 

 barn and to the cows, and cleaning the stalls. As 

 you will see further on in a detailed account of how 

 this is accomplished, the extra labor to soil cattle 

 over pasturing is very insignificant in comparison to 

 the benefits. 



"Soiling," sa3'S Mr. H. Stewart, "is a little more 

 laborious than pasturing, but $1 spent in extra labor 

 is replaced ten times over in saving of land, saving 

 of feed, and saving of manure. I have found labor 

 very much cheaper than feed." Again he says: 

 " Besides fifteen cows, there were three horses, 



