13 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[JiNtTART, 
lifted and the barrow rolled upon them, and 
wheeled easily about corners or through doors, 
or ended up as in fig. 2, for thorough cleaning 
out, or that it may occupy less room. It will 
run easily upon a floor, but when it is necessary 
to shove it through a narrow passage, as in the 
feedways between the mangers in the barn just 
described, it is desirable to have rails laid to 
guide the wheels. 
Simple strips of hard 
wood, an inch high 
and two inches wide, 
one placed on each 
side, at such a dis¬ 
tance apart that the 
wheels will run out¬ 
side of them, are all 
that is necessary for 
straight tracks. (Such 
a car is technically 
called a “ tram," and a 
railway which does 
not requii'e flanged 
wheels—that is,where 
the cars do not run on 
the rails—a tram-way.) 
A Root Cutter may be very conveniently 
made out of this feed box, by putting in a piece 
of plank, as is indicated by dotted lines, at right 
angles to the sloping bottom, and fastened in 
that position by strong pins or otherwise. The 
roots being thrown in, they may be rapidly cut 
up by shoving a sharp spade back and forth 
upon the bottom against the plank at the end. 
A Western Way of Slaughtering and 
Cutting Tip Hogs on the Farm. 
An Illinois Barn. 
The plan herewith presented was prepared by 
Mr. A. J. Aldrich, of Worcester Co., Mass., for 
his brother in Illinois, and as it meets his re¬ 
quirements very well, we give it for the benefit 
of our Prairie readers. A large amount of space 
is devoted to horses, more than is usual on other 
farms, but the allotment of stable room to differ¬ 
ent kinds of stock may of course be made to suit 
the requirements of any particular farm, for 
which a barn similar to this may be constructed. 
The main building is 40x80 feet, with 20-feet 
posts, (this hight is not objectionable as they use 
horse pitchforks,) and the whole of it is devoted 
to hay, with the exception of a 6-feet way on each 
end to pass through into the wings. The cattle 
wings are 30 feet wide, and can be made as 
long as is required for the stock kept. In this 
case, they are each 72 feet long, cheaply built 
with 8-feet posts, and used only for stock, though 
if one chooses, they might be made higher to get 
room overhead for straw, corn fodder, hay, etc. 
A good grain room is made on each end of the 
barn with a roof of the same pitch as the 
.pattle wings. A railway runs past the grain 
room doors, through each wing, to convey feed 
easily to the stock. A horse-power is placed on 
the barn floor, for cutting up the hay; and meal 
is mixed with the hay before feeding. In Mr. 
A’s experience it pays well to grind his grain. 
It is obvious that the cattle stables may oe 
mere close sheds, furnished only with feeding 
boxes and racks; or they may be floored and 
well fitted up. In this case there are cellars 
under the whole barn, wings and all, those 
under the wings being used for manure, leaving 
the one under the main barn clear for young 
latlle or sheep, or for any other purpose. The 
capacitv of the barn for hay is calculated to be 
125 to 150 tons. The barn-floor is 12 feet wide. 
A little different arrangement would make 
room for loose boxes for the horses, rooms for 
tools, carts and waggons, etc. Western farm¬ 
ers do not make much use of nice carriages and 
harnesses, and space for these things is not pro¬ 
vided. They are however beginning to wake 
up to the importance of housing their stock in 
cold weather, and of saving their manure, to 
keep their land up in good condition, and there 
may be ideas in this plan that will suit some 
persons, should no one adopt it as a whole. 
The implement which we figure is one for 
which almost every farmer may have use. It is 
simply a feed box, made with a sloping bottom, 
and placed upon a four-wheeled truck. When 
one end is turned down, as indicated by dotted 
lines on the left of the figure, the contents m.ay 
very easily be taken out with a shovel. The 
truck is framed of oak stuff, light and strong. 
The wheels are cast iron, 1 inch wide, and 
about 6 inches in diameter, set fast or loose on 
the axles, as ma}' be considered best. The front 
pair are so located that the rear end may be 
Last month we described the method of 
slaughtering and cutting up hogs in vogue iu 
this part of the country. Mr. G. W. Smith, 
writing from Kalamazoo Co., Mich., describes 
the following practice, which prevails in West¬ 
ern Missouri and Kansas, and probably else¬ 
where at the West: “They first build a large 
fire out-doors, and pile on a lot of stones to heat. 
They have a platform of convenient height, and 
at one end place a trough six or eight feet 
long, and large enough to scald in, filling it 
partly full of water. The top of the trough 
should come a few inches above the platform. 
When the stones are hot, they put them into 
the trough wiln a shovel, and when the water 
is hot enough, they shovel them out, and put 
them on the fire again. When the water gets 
too cool, all that is needed is to put in a few 
hot stones. I have tried both the Missouri 
style and the old way of heating the water in a 
kettle, and like the former much better. 
As to the cutting up, the Western plan is bet¬ 
ter yet : Lay the hog on his back, and cut off the 
head; then turn him down on the right side, 
place the left hand on the hog, take a sharp 
knife in the right hand, and split him from the 
lack of the neck, strait as a line to the root of 
the tail. , Then turn him on his back, and take 
an axe or cleaver, and cut each side of the back¬ 
bone as close as convenient, take out the back¬ 
bone by itself, and your hog is evenly cut in two. 
You will now find it easy to take out the ribs, 
and can do it more nicely than if the backbone 
had been split open. Tim advantage is here: 
a hog’s backbone has many short, flat bones 
running up from the central bone, and if you 
split through them you have the meat full of 
fine bones, split bones, slivers of bones, etc.” 
Our correspondent might have added that this 
