182 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
quality and value are kept. The calves are then 
too valuable for veal, and the heifers are raised on 
the skimmed milk. A calf pen may be provided at 
little expense. The writer has made two pens dur¬ 
ing the past winter out of common hay or straw 
barracks which were in the yard near the barn. 
These were enclosed 8 feet high, and a floor of 
rails was laid upon the girts to hold the hay or 
straw. The interior was then divided as shown in 
the plan at figure 7, and the pens were separated by 
partitions and doors, as at figure 8. In these pens 
the calves were kept dry, warm, and clean, and have 
Fig. 8.—PENS FOR CALVES. 
thrived better than under any previous arrange¬ 
ment. The pens, if 6 feet square, or 6x8, will give 
ample room for a calf to frolic about and keep 
itself warm by the exercise. A small hay rack and 
a little feed box may be provided in which a small 
supply of hay and feed may be furnished. 
A Simple Filter.— Auother European corre¬ 
spondent sends a plan for making a water filter. 
He provides two common flower pots, one larger 
Fig. 9.— section. Fig. 10.— filter at work. 
than the other. Some coarse washed gravel (a, 
fig. 9) is placed at the bottom of the larger one, 
upon this a layer of fine washed sand, b, then a 
layer of broken and washed charcoal, c ; the smaller 
pot has a layer of gravel and sand arranged in it, as 
shown in the engraving, and is then inverted over 
the first pot; pipes are arranged to carry the water 
in and out, as may be needed. If a pail of water is 
placed so that a small bent lead pipe may be ar¬ 
ranged as a siphon (as shown at figure 10), a quan¬ 
tity of water may be run through the filter in a few 
minutes at any time it may be wanted for use. 
A Hay-Feeding Rack.—“ A Subscriber” sends 
a sketch of a rack for so feeding hay that the cows 
or cattle cannot waste it. It consists of a frame 
closed in with fencing boards, leaving a space in 
which the cattle can put their heads to reach the 
hay. The hay is thrown into a Y-shaped rack in¬ 
side, as shown in figure 11, and whatever hay is 
pulled out from this by the cattle, falls into the 
outside rack and is saved from trampling and waste. 
Testing Milk and Measuring Cream. 
—->— 
It is very desirable to know which is the best cow 
in the dairy, and which is the worst; because un¬ 
less actual tests are applied, the cow which the 
owner considered his best, may really be one which 
does not pay for her feed and care. It is not the 
quantity of the milk alone, but the quality, to¬ 
gether with the quantity, which is the true test of 
value, and this cannot be ascertained without some 
accurate means of judging, such as are supplied in 
the shape of test tubes, cream gauges and lactome¬ 
ters. The tubes are small glass measures about 
five inches long, one inch in diameter, with a lip 
at the top as shown at a. The tubes may be 
marked with a three-cornered file, in inches, half 
inches, and tenths, if desired; but this is not 
necessary unless the proportion of cream given is 
to be ascertained. This, however, is useful when 
the value of different feeding stuffs is in question, 
as in a recent case with the writer, when in a test 
of the value of palm-nut meal, it was found to in¬ 
crease the yield of cream from 1 inch in 4 of milk 
to li inch during two weeks’ use of it, the in¬ 
crease being steady and gradual for the whole 
time. In the illustration given, one tube is shown 
at a, in which the cream stands at one inch. In set¬ 
ting milk for a test in this way, each cow’s milk to 
be tested is stirred immediately after milking and 
straining, and poured into separate glasses, exactly 
up to the 4-inch mark, and without any foam upon 
it. The samples are then set away in the usual 
place for the milk, and under precisely the same 
conditions as to temperature, etc., as the rest. 
To test the quality of the milk itself after the 
cream has been removed, or to discover the quan- ! 
tity of water contained in the milk, whether it be 
naturally present or by adulteration, three or more j 
glass jars, one for each cow to be tested, and a lac¬ 
tometer, are used. In using the test-jars, the 
largest ones, b, c, are filled with milk, as before 
described for the small test-tubes, up to the mark 
0. This is 10 inches from the bottom. Each mark 
upon the jar represents I per cent, and the quan¬ 
tity of cream which rises is thus shown. To test 
the milk itself, the cream is removed carefully from 
the jars, and the smaller jar (d) is filled with water 
up to the mark 0. This jar is marked with 100 
lines, dividing its length up to 0 with 100 equal 
spaces ; each one, therefore, represents 1 percent. 
The lactometer is then inserted carefully—because it 
is fragile and should be carefully handled—into each 
of the milk jars in succession, and the depth to which 
it sinks in each noted (see&). The jar in which it sinks 
the deepest is the poorest milk, and the lactometer 
may probably mark 26, 28 or 30 on the scale, show¬ 
ing the specific gravity to be 1,026, 1,028 or 1,030 to 
the 0 of the scale, representing 1,000, which is the 
specific, gravity of water, or rather the arbitrary 
point given to water as the 
fixed standard from which the 
specific gravity of all other 
liquids is measured, pure wa¬ 
ter being generally accepted as 
the base or key which regu 
latcs all other liquids as to the 
scale of their relative weight. 
If a sample of milk marks 
1,028, or lower, it is too poor 
and watery to be satisfactory 
or profitable, and if one marks 
1,030 or over, it is as good as 
can be expected. If it is de¬ 
sired, in case of suspected 
adulteration, to find the quan¬ 
tity of water that has been added to the milk, 
the suspected milk is put into one jar, as be¬ 
fore mentioned, and milk known to be pure is 
put into the other one. After the cream has been 
removed, the lactometer is inserted into each 
Fig. 11.— RACK FOR FEEDING HAY. 
[May, 
sample, and the depth t© which it sinks in each is 
noted. If the suspected milk marks lower than 
the other, adulteration is indicated, and the pro¬ 
portion of it may he known by adding to the pure 
GLASSES FOR TESTING MILK. 
milk as much water from the per cent glass which 
I has been previously filled up to 0, as will bring the 
lactometer to the same depth in it as in the other 
| one. The percentage of water added will be shown 
by the marking on the per cent glass, and this 
| will show the extent of the adulteration. 
Barn Without Cross-beams. 
Since the use of the horse hay-fork has become 
common, a change has been made in the construc¬ 
tion of barns. These buildings are now required 
to be free from obstructions overhead, so that the 
movable fork can have freedom to act in any part 
of the barn. Modern barns are so designed as to 
cover as little ground space as possible, thus sav¬ 
ing cost in the roof, to be high rather than spacious, 
and to be so arranged that there shall be no cross¬ 
beams to interfere with the run of the hay-fork 
with its load from end to end. Those who are in¬ 
terested in designing or constructing barns are, 
therefore, obliged to take this into account in mak¬ 
ing plans. A frame for a barn, designed with this 
end in view, is given in the accompanying illustra¬ 
tion. It is intended to have ranges of stables, or 
stalls for cattle below, with a wide floor between 
these, to be used for the purpose of feeding and 
preparing food. Above these are the bays for 
storing hay and grain,'on either side, and the frame 
section of earn without cross-beams. 
is so arranged that sufficient strength and stiffness 
is given to it by bracing in each bent. The bents 
are connected as usual on the outside, by the plates 
and girts, and on the inside by the beam which sus¬ 
tains the floor above the stables, strongly braced to 
the posts, and by purline plates upon the inner 
posts ; cross-beams run from one purline plate to 
the other, and the frame for the hay-carriage is 
suspended to these, as shown in the design. This 
mode of framing gives great strength without any 
interfering timbers inside to come in the way of 
unloading hay or grain, as the bays are entirely open 
from the lower beams up to the purline plates. 
