1871.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
371 
-■which we 
farm will do when it has a chance- 
know it soon will have. 
To show that my emotions do not depend en¬ 
tirely on what the farm is to do , let me say what 
it has done. We are now (end of July,) feeding 
in the barn and yards the equivalent of 35 full- 
grown cows, and we have had about this amount 
all the season. About 15 acres of the land are 
in fallow (being cleaned for late planting), or 
just set out to roots and cabbage; 4 acres are 
in the inclosures about the buildings. This 
leaves about 43 acres in crop. Since about the 
middle of May the stock spoken of above has 
been fed (soiled) entirely from the produce of 
the land; we have housed 10 tons of well-cured 
oats and some 2 tons of rye straw ; as much as 
5 tons of oats, grass, vetches, and other surplus 
soiling crops will be secured within a week; nine 
and a half acres of new meadow (that has cut 
two crops of soiling oats already) will give 
a good aftermath to cure in August; thir¬ 
teen acres of sowed corn is growing most luxu¬ 
riantly, and seven acres more are to be planted 
at once for a tender bite in the autumn; four 
acres of potatoes are 
growing, and most 
of them promise 
well. Just how 
much of the corn- 
land we shall have 
to cut over to feed 
our stock until frost, 
I do not know; 
It will depend very 
much on the age of 
the corn when cut. 
But I am confident 
that the 35 head 
of stock can not be¬ 
tween now and No¬ 
vember 1st consume 
more than one third 
of the crop, leaving 
two thirds to be 
cured for winter use. 
To sum up: If my 
anticipations are 
fulfilled, the 42 acres 
will have produced, 
this year, enough 
long fodder of vari¬ 
ous kinds to entirely supply the 35 head, the year 
through, with all the hay and fodder they will 
need. 
This is no wonderful showing. Of course, 
there are many farms that have done better, 
and I regard it as only a commencement of our 
own possibilities; but it is fully enough to con¬ 
firm me in my belief that before the time the 
Ogden Farm operation is put to the test of an 
auction sale, to determine the actual money re¬ 
sult (six years hence), theGOi acres will produce 
all the long fodder needed for 50 cows, and sala¬ 
ble crop enough to pay for all the grain they 
will need, that is, to support them entirely. 
When w r e estimate the yards, roads, headlands, 
etc., etc., the available area for cropping will 
be reduced to about fifty acres. A cow to the 
acre—well kept—is not unknown, but, in my 
experience it is at least unusual; and it is a re¬ 
sult that can only be achieved by soiling, high 
feeding, and heavy manuring. That we need 
stop at this point, I am not inclined to believe. 
That an acre of land—with sufficient manure 
and sufficient labor—might support two cows, 
or even more, is within the range of possibility. 
It is mainly a question of the just apportion¬ 
ment of the means to the end—of the point at 
which the cost of production will overbalance 
the value of the product. Where this point 
lies with any given soil, has not, so far as I 
know, been determined. Probably it lies farther 
on than most of us would suppose, for, up to a 
very high rate of production, the expenses bear 
a less and less ratio to the crop the larger the 
crop becomes. 
Before an average farmer can decide whether 
soiling will pay him, or not, he must know how 
much it costs him to pasture his stock, and 
how much it would cost to soil them. For in¬ 
stance: In my neighborhood, land that will 
carry one cow to two acres is worth $150 per 
acre. The pasture for 20 cows (40 acres) would 
cost $6,000; at seven per cent, the outlay for 
summer keep would be $420. Five acres of 
the same land that had been thoroughly •prepared 
for soiling—that is, that had received, for ten 
years, all the manure and all the labor the forty 
acres had demanded to be kept in good order— 
would, if the crops were well arranged, support 
the same head from early in May until November. 
Thus $315 in interest would be saved. The 
labor of growing the crops and attending to the 
tive” cattle do well if they hold to one half their 
yield six months after calving. Jerseys, that 
will not do a great deal better than this, are not 
worth having. I have a thorough-bred heifer 
(“Thrift”), that had her first calf as a two-year- 
old in October last. She took the bull again in 
November, and is to calve in August. She is 
small, and not an especially fine specimen of 
the breed. I have several young ones whose 
flow is much larger, and I only, bring her for¬ 
ward as “a case in point.” The following is 
her monthly average of milk 
November_14>4 pounds 
December ....14 “ 
January._11 “ 
February. liy 2 
March.10 “ 
Fig. 2.—“ dubbed ” white leghorns. —(See next page 
stock would not cost so much as this, and there 
would be, so far as the land is concerned, all 
the difference of high condition and constant 
improvement, or low condition and constant 
deterioration. The land is like the human 
mind: the more we put into it, the more it 
will receive and make good use of, and the 
more it is used, the more serviceable it becomes, 
if only used with judgment and discretion. 
Then, again, the produce of the cows will be 
more in the case of soiling than in the other. 
In June I was making a very satisfactory 
amount of butter; so were the pasture men all 
around me. Now that the drouth has (in spite 
of passing rains) begun to affect the pastures, 
their product is falling off, and by September it 
will be materially lessened. My product is in¬ 
creasing week by week, until, from the same 
number of cows, it is now over ten per cent 
more than it was in June, and, as the expe¬ 
rience of previous years has shown, it will be 
fully ten per cent more in September than it is 
now. Probably by that time the pastured cows 
will have fallen, on an average, to one half their 
June supply. 
Some of this difference, though less than would 
probably be supposed, taking whole herds to¬ 
gether, is due to the character of the cows. “ Na¬ 
April. 8<4 pounds 
May. 9 “ 
June.10 “ 
July... 8“ 
August. 8 J 4 “ 
The daily average for the ten months (during 
which time she gave 3,150 pounds of milk, or 
1,575 quarts) was 10) pounds—being 72 per 
cent of her fullest flow, while the product of the 
last month (within one month of calving) was 
57 per cent of the fullest flow. It does not now 
look as though we would be able to dry her off. 
At the date of this 
writing, when she is 
within three weeks 
of calving, and 
is springing a fresh 
bag, she is giving 
a little more than 
8 pounds per day, 
considerably more 
than one half as 
much as she gave at 
her flush. This is 
what I mean when 
I say, that a good 
Jersey is the best 
family cow. She is 
small, and cheaply 
kept, and -while she 
will never overflow 
the pantry with 
more milk than 
the pans will hold, 
she will keep the 
milkman from the 
door more w T eeks of 
the year than any 
' other cow in the 
world. Five quarts a day is not a large amount 
of milk for a growing family, but if it is good 
Jersey milk, it will go as far (except in the swill- 
pail) as eight quarts of “milkman’s” milk, and 
—what is the best of all—the cream does not 
fall away as fast as the milk does. The last 
month’s milk is much richer than the first. 
To explain my illustration of the economy 
of soiling, it is proper to say that it would 
probably be practically impossible to arrange 
the cropping of five acres so as to keep up a full 
season’s supply for 20 cows, but ten acres may 
be made to feed the whole from one half its 
produce, the other half being cured for winter 
use. 
As a report of progress to those who are cu¬ 
rious about my dairying, I would say that the 
deep cans are still in constant use, and that I 
am more and more pleased with the system. 
With all sorts of weather, when we would 
probably have made several semi-failures if 
using shallow pans, the butter has been perfectly 
uniform, and even my Philadelphia custom¬ 
ers (who like, when away from home, to brag 
about Philadelphia butter) say they have never 
eaten butter so good as the O. F. they are now 
getting; and a little praise goes a great ways 
with a young farmer. 
