ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 8l 



amount of fertility ^rom the soil. Then why not every farmer 

 keep a few cows and learn to make good butter. There is noth- 

 ing that will make him money quicker and easier than cows and 

 hogs, they always go together. 



I do not want him to get cows before he has a place suitable 

 to keep them, but as fast as he can do so, get good cows and raise 

 all your heifer calves, or, if you can buy good ones at a reasona- 

 ble price, by all means do so. 



In the winter you have to feed your cows, so have your lots 

 hog tight, and let your hogs run after the cows. Then have a 

 separator, not one of the cold water tin pans that so many agents 

 and fakers are praising, but get a centrifugal separator, separate 

 your milk and feed to your hogs and calves w^hile warm. 



If you have small pigs you can make a slop for them and 

 you will be surprised to see how fat and fast they will grow. 

 Now have a good warm stable to put your cows in every day, take 

 your manure spreader and take the manure out on your farm. 



The majority of farmers have only their horse barns, which 

 they clean out and pile up against the barn to keep the horse 

 Avarm, while they let the poor cows stand out in the lot to shiver 

 and shake and barely give enough milk to keep a family of three 

 of four with butter. 



Let me tell you something I personally know. Put in your 

 wheat and put on a light covering of manure in the fall, don't be 

 afraid you will scald it, and your wheat will not be so liable to 

 freeze out and the Hession fly will never trouble you, and your 

 yield will be much larger. Again, if the manure is kept cleaned 

 away from the barns, you do away with multitudes of diseases, 

 germs, and the bacteria that contaminates our milk, thereby caus- 

 ing many cases of poorly flavored butter which otherwise would 

 have been good. Again, think of the benefit the soil would have 

 derived if the manure lay on the ground all winter. 



The practical farmer will see that his fields receive fertiliz- 

 ing each year; that all burrs, thistles and obnoxious weeds are 

 pulled and destroyed every year, for they take so much strength 



