1871.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
55 
larger stomachs than pigs, and can digest a less 
elaborated food, such as straw, stalks, hay, and 
grass. I cannot find any experiments that show 
the exact "maintenance ration" of well-bred 
cattle, sheep, and swine — I mean how much 
food they require to keep them alive and healthy 
without gaining or losing weight; in other 
words, how much food is required to sustain 
the vital functions. If this point was deter- 
mined it would not be so difficult to answer Mr. 
Thomas' question. I see no reason to doubt 
that a well-bred Shorthorn, or a well-bred Cots- 
wold or Leicester sheep, haying a quiet dispo- 
sition and a minimum amount of offal would, 
for the grain consumed over and above the 
amount required to sustain the vital functions, 
gain as rapwly as a well-bred pig. And it is 
certain that, unless in a case where a pig lives 
on food that would otherwise be wasted, the 
food required to sustain the vital functions is 
far less costly in the case of cattle and sheep 
than in the case of pigs. In other words, hay, 
straw, and stalks cost far less to produce them, 
in proportion to the nutriment they contain, 
than grain. We can often, as at the present 
time, buy grain at a cheaper rate, in proportion 
to nutriment, than hay or straw. But we can- 
not grow it nearly as cheaply. 
The point Mr. Thomas wants to get at is this: 
When cattle, sheep, and pigs have the requisite 
amount of food necessary to sustain the vital 
functions, how many pounds of corn will it take 
to produce a pound of beef, mutton, and pork ? 
I cannot answer this question for the reason 
above given. And it cannot be answered until 
we know the amountof food required to sustain 
the vital functions. 
In Dr. Miles' experiments on Pigs at the 
Michigan Agricultural College, six pigs of the 
same litter were put into two pens — three in a 
pen — and in both pens the pigs were allowed 
all the corn-meal they could eat. One of the 
pigs in Pen B met with an accident and was 
killed. When 30 weeks old the pigs weighed 
as follows: 
Pen A— Pig 1, 59 lbs. ; pig 2, 69 lbs. ; nig 3, 
133 lbs. 
Pen B— Pig 4. 156 lbs; pig 5, 142 lbs. 
The pigs in Pen B ate 61 per cent more food 
than those in Pen A, and gained over 92 per 
cent more. This result was owing to pigs 1 and 
2, though perfectly healthy, gaining so little. At 
this time, Dr. Miles put the three pigs of Pen A 
into three- separate pens, and the reason of their 
gaining so little was at once apparent. During 
the first week pig 1 ate 11 lbs. meal ; pig 2, ate 
12'| 2 lbs. meal; pig 3, ate 25'| 3 lbs. meal. 
During the month the pigs ate and gained as 
follows : Pig 1 ate 48' | 2 lbs. meal and lost 1 lb. ; 
pig 2, ate 51' | j lbs. meal and gained 4 lbs. ; pig 
3, ate 100 lbs. meal and gained 19' |,. lbs. 
In tliis case it required nearly 50 lbs. of corn 
per month to sustain the vital functions, and 50 
lbs. of corn over and above this amount gave 
19'lslbs. of increase, or 100 lb?, of corn produced 
39 lbs. of increase. In other words, it. took a 
little over 2'|' 2 lbs. of corn to produce a pound of 
increase. It is capable, chemically, of produc- 
ing a larger increase than this — that is to say, 
2'Ja lbs. of corn contain more carbonaceous, ni- 
trogenous, and mineral matter than the 1 lb. of 
increase of animal. 
A farmer would be very likely to say that it 
took 100 lbs. of corn to produce the 19'| 3 lbs. of 
pork. But in point of fact it took 50 lbs. to 
" run the machine" and 50 lbs. to do the work 
of producing pork. 
Now, as I have said, in the case of well-bred 
cattle and sheep, we can ''run the machine" 
with a cheaper article of food than corn, and 
we can also use this cheaper food to some ex- 
tent in producing growth ; but there comes a 
point beyond which we cannot go in the pro- 
duction of growth with this cheap food. Then, 
when this point is attained, and when the ani- 
mal has digestive and assimilative power still 
unused, if we feed corn, I do not see why the 
ox, the cow, or the sheep is not as capable of 
extracting as much material of growth out of 
it as the pig; in other words, why 2'| 2 lbs. of 
corn will not give us 1 lb. of pork. 
Corn is seldom so high in this State, or meat, 
butter,and cheese so low, that it may not be much 
more profitably fed out on the farm than sold 
in the market. But it must be fed with judg- 
ment, and to the right kind of animals. There 
arc tons of corn fed out that, aside from the 
value of the manure, does not bring 10 cents a 
bushel. One of my neighbors lias a red, raw- 
boned cow that is farrow. She gives a little 
milk, and he asked me the other day if I did 
not think it would pay him to dry her off and 
fatten her. He would " have some corn ground, 
and give her two quarts of meal and two quarts 
of millfeed a day." I told him it would not, 
pay. She was not the right kind of animal to 
fatten in the winter. I would feed the meal 
and bran, and keep on milking her. She would 
convert the meal into butter, and that would 
pay better than converting it into fat. " But 
the meal," he said, " will dry her up." "It will 
not," I replied ; "but if it should, then she will 
fatten." I have two farrow cows that. I am fat- 
tening in this way. We give them — and in fact 
all the cows — from three to four quarts of 
cooked corn-meal each per day. We commenced 
feeding them about die 1st of November. Our 
pastures had been poor, and the cows had not 
done very well the past summer, and there was 
talk in the house that we should " have to buy 
butter before spring." I said nothing about 
giving them the meal ; but in two or three 
weeks I was informed that we were "making 
more butter a week than we did in summer" — 
and yellower, firmer, sweeter, and belter butler 
I do not wish. And instead of buying, we soon 
bad a five-gallon crock to sell; and the cows 
are getting fat into the bargain. 
I doubt if there is any better way of selling 
corn than in the form of winter butter — fatten- 
ing the cows, if need be, at the same lime. But 
nearly every thing turns on the skill and judg- 
ment of the feeder, and on the breed and quali- 
ties of the animals. One of the commonest 
mistakes is to let animals take care of themselves 
pretty much all summer and fall, and then 
just as winter sets in to spasmodically attempt 
to fatten them by giving grain. Thousands of 
farmers do this with their lings, and not a few 
treat their cows in the same way. Stead}', per- 
sistent feeding, clay after day, week after week, 
and month after month, is what pays. We must 
never let the digestive powers of the animal run 
to waste, and never overtask them. There is 
no profit in keeping an animal that is not either 
gaining in flesh or giving milk all the time. A 
good cow that is well fed in winter, will not. 
only give us a good strong calf, but next sum- 
mer all the fat she has stored up we get back in 
the form of butter. If our dairy cows are not 
receiving as much food in winter as they can 
digest, better far to give them corn-meal than 
to sell it. 
I feel that I am not answering Mr. Thomas' 
questions, and will leave the subject for others 
to discuss. 
In regain! to plowing under clover for manure, 
instead of makins it into bay, feeding it cm 3 
animals, and drawing back the manure, it may 
be remarked that the animal does not remove, 
on the average, more than 5 per cent of the in- 
gredients of most value as manure. Prom 90 
lo 93 lbs. of hay plowed under would be worth 
no more than the liquid and solid droppings of 
an animal eating 100 lbs. of hay ; in fact not as 
much, as the latter would decompose quicker 
and be more readily assimilated by the plants. 
The manure from a ton of clover hay, ac- 
cording to Mr Lawes' estimate, is worth $9.64. 
The clover hay itself, plowed under, would be 
worth, say $10.24, or 60 cents more. I suppose 
a crop of clover hay can be put in the barn for 
$2 per ton, and the manure from it drawn back 
again and spread for 40 cents ; so that the ac- 
tual cost of the food in the hay to the farmer 
would be $3.00 per ton— that is the cost as com- 
pared with plowing it under. I will not say 
whether it is or is not worth this to feed to 
stock. But I do not think if I wanted Mr. Ged- 
des, or any other advocate for plowing under 
clover, lo winter a horse for me on clover bay, 
he would ask less than $1.00 per week. And if 
the horse eats 2001bs. a week, this would be 
$10 per ton for the food in the clover; in other 
words, be makes $7.00 per ton by converting 
the clover into liny instead of plowiug it under. 
In regard to swine, Mr. Thomas puts his 
question— purposely no doubt — in the most dif- 
ficult form for me to answer. Read it again. 
It seems a simple question; but it is full of lim- 
itations and difficulties. It is certain that espe- 
cially in pigs, we should never use any thing but 
a thorough-bred male. Now, I am fully per- 
suaded in my own mind that a thorough-bred 
Essex is the best boar to use with our common 
sows. But the question limits me to such as 
are " common and accessible." The right kind 
of sows for the cross can be found in any neigh- 
borhood; but there is hot one district in a 
thousand where an Essex boar, or any oth ;• 
thoroughly established breed, can be found. In 
the case supposed the tanner wants to keep 
only one sow, and Mr. Thomas asks, "Must he 
keep a boar also?" And herein lies the real 
difficulty of the question. Some years ago a 
gentleman in this town, who kept three or font- 
cows, wanted to improve his stock, and he gave 
Mr. Sheldon $300 for a good Shorthorn bull If 
he had had forty or fifty cows of his own, 
nothing could have paid him better. But as it 
was, he put up the price to $300 per cow, which 
was from three to six times more than the usual 
charge, and scarcely a farmer in the neighbor- 
hood availed himself of this splendid opportu- 
nity of improving his stock. And it will be 
just so with the farmer who gets an Essex or a 
Berkshire boar. And the better he is the more 
fault they will find with him, because the greater 
will be the contrast with their own stock. lie 
will be too small, too delicate, too fine-boned, 
and, too quiet. And if he answers all these ob- 
jections, they will say, " We should like him 
first-rate if he was only white." 
Where this prejudice against black pigs ex- 
ists, a farmer who depends on the patronage of 
his neighbors must select a white breed. For 
my own pari, in such a case, I should prefer lo 
get atherough-bred Suffolk or small Yorkshire, 
but most farmers in the vicinity would probably 
prefer a larger hog. In this case I should get a 
large Yorkshire, or a Jefferson County pig. The 
Chester Whiles, such as I have seen, are alto- 
gether loo coarse. 
If Mr. Thomas had asked me this question: 
A farmer has a good common sow; he is a good 
feeder, and likes to have good stock, and takes 
