1873.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
215 
iiig. Where it can be well rotted without loss 
there is manifestly great advantage in doing so. 
And when it is thoroughly decomposed, I think, 
where it is convenient, it is better, so far as the 
immediate effect is concerned, to spread it on 
the surface of the land rather than to plow it 
under. But of course much depends on cir¬ 
cumstances. 
A young farmer in Delaware writes: “In 
your ‘Walks and Talks’ for April you say 
* there i3 no necessity for adding sulphate of 
lime to the manure heap.’ I am a young man 
just starting out on a farm, after working it 
three years to learn how, rent free and stock 
and tools furnished. I am making a manure 
heap, and have been mixing sulphate of lime 
or plaster pretty thoroughly through it to assist 
in the fermentation, as I thought, but you have 
thrown cold wafer on my hopes.” 
I am sorry to have done so. The plaster will 
do no harm, and may do more or less good. 
But it always makes me savage when agricul¬ 
tural writers lead young men to think that by 
doing some little thing, such as sowing plaster 
on a manure heap, or making a “compost” of 
this or that material, they are going to make 
their farms and themselves rich. There is no 
such easy method of making land rich. 
“ The poorest field on the farm,” my corre¬ 
spondent continues, “and which has been in 
grass the longest, I intend to break up and put 
in corn. It contains about 1G acres. It is a 
rather heavy clay loam, with a clay subsoil. I 
intended to plow it, say six inches deep, and sub¬ 
soil it, and plant in the old way. But after read¬ 
ing the April number of the American Agricul¬ 
turist I have changed my mind, and think of 
running the land out one way and manuring in 
the drills, and then put hen-manure on the corn 
after it comes up. What do you think of this 
plan?” 
You had better follow the “ old way.” It is 
a good deal of work to furrow out and manure 
16 acres of corn. It will delay the planting. 
And besides, sod land plowed this spring can 
not be furrowed out deep enough to hold the 
manure. As you get your land “ rent free,” 
you can afford to adopt the “slow method” of 
farming. Summer-fallow your clay land, or if 
you do not want to do this, plant your coin in 
hills, cultivate thoroughly, and try to be content 
with an ordinary crop for this year. Save your 
manure, and apply it to the grass-land this fall 
that you intend to raise corn on next summer. 
You will be the gainer in the end. 
The farmers of the West are grumbling about 
the high rates of freight—and not without 
cause—but they are no worse off than we are 
here. We grumble because the railroads will 
carry wheat and corn and cattle from the West 
at so much lower rates than they will carry 
ours. I have no doubt, however, that good will 
grow out of this agitation. 
Mr. Bingham writes me in regard to some 
experiments he has made in fattening pigs on 
raw corn as compared with cooked corn-meal. 
The raw corn was decidedly the best. He 
seems to have been much surprised at the result. 
I have never been an enthusiastic advocate of 
cooking. If I -was trying to see how l'ast I 
could make a pig grow, I would give him 
both cooked and uncooked food. I think it 
very likely that the cooked mush contained too 
much water. If the pigs bad been allowed to 
eat what mush they wanted, and afterwards 
given all the raw corn they would eat, the result 
might have been very different. It ought to be 
distinctly understood that the only object of 
cooking is to enable the animals to eat and di¬ 
gest more food. We cook, not to save food, 
but to save digestion. If the pigs can eat and 
digest all the food they can assimilate there is 
nothing to be gained by cooking—time, labor, 
and fuel are all thrown away. 
Mr. B. sends me a sample of “ship-stuff” 
that he buys for $12 per ton. It is a prime arti¬ 
cle. Common bran he gets for $8 per ton. If 
I could get food at such prices I do not think I 
should spend much time in cooking it. I have 
to pay $20 per ton for bran, and $28 for corn- 
meal. If I can make anything in producing 
pork—and taking one year with another I think 
I can—Mr. B. ought to get rich, for he can get 
nearly as much for his pork as I can. 
We have just lost a valuable Cotswold ewe. 
She was apparently well until thirty-six hours 
ago, when we observed that she separated from 
the rest of the flock. Her head soon com¬ 
menced to swell. She grew rapidly worse, 
seemed to have great difficulty in breathing, 
and in thirty-six hours was dead. Two years 
ago I lost a sheep in the same way, but not so 
suddenly. 
English farmers often talk about a “rent¬ 
paying sheep.” I suppose they mean a sheep 
that is kept by a farmer, rather than a breeder, 
for no other purpose than to produce mutton 
and wool. The breeders keep sheep to show at 
the Fairs , and to sell to other breeders and far¬ 
mers. It is necessary to have such men. They 
take great pains to improve the breeds and keep 
them pure. But I think it will be found that 
neither here nor in England are the “rent-pay- 
ing” sheep pure-bred. I do not believe that for 
the mere purpose of raising mutton and wool 
it will pay to keep a flock of pure-bred South- 
Downs, Leicester, Cotswold, or Lincoln sheep. 
I do not think it would pay even in England, 
and it certainly will not pay here. The “ rent¬ 
paying” sheep here is a grade. I have to-day 
(April 19th) weighed a grade Cotswold that is 
not to exceed a year old. He is out of a com¬ 
mon Merino ewe that will not weigh over 80 lbs. 
He is covered with a splendid fleece of long 
combing-wool nearly as good as his pure-bred 
Cotswold sire. He is healthy and hardy, and 
weighed to-day 166 lbs. He has, of course, been 
well fed. But it is clear to my mind that if we 
can take common Merino ewes, and by the use 
of a pure-bred Cotswold or Leicester ram raise 
lambs that will weigh after shearing say 150 
lbs., it will pay to feed them well. 
Three of my pure-bred Cotswold ram lambs 
weighed to-day 165 lbs., 172 lbs., and 185 lbs. 
The last •was born April 20th, and if to-morrow 
was not Sunday I would have weighed him on 
his birthday. As it is, I suppose I may say, ‘.‘I 
have a Cotswold sheep, less than a year old , that 
weighs 185 lbs. !” According to the usual esti¬ 
mate of dividing the live-weight by seven to 
get at the dressed weight per quarter, he would 
dress 26 lbs. per quarter. I do not think this is 
bad, but great size is the very last thing I aim 
at in breeding. 
“ If it is true,” remarks the Deacon, “ that we 
have to draw over 11 tons of water in 15 tons 
of manure, I think we had better plow under 
the clover, or at any rate feed it off on the land.” 
I have no objection to the latter plan. It has 
been well said that sheep are the cheapest 
manure-carts. But what we should aim at is to 
make our manure richer. It would not be a 
difficult matter to make one ton of manure 
worth as much as four or five tons of the stuff 
that some farmers draw out of the yards in 
spring, and which they call manure. 
I was glad to see Col. Waring’s remarks about 
the English hay-stacks. I stack three fourths 
of my hay in the field where it grows. If I 
had the money to spare, I should build a big 
barn, but I thought T could spend my money 
to better advantage in underdraining and im¬ 
proving the land. And in the mean time I try 
to persuade myself that there are some advan¬ 
tages in stacking hay in the field. But I know 
full well that I have some years had more hay 
damaged in the stacks than would pay the in¬ 
terest on a three-thousand-dollar barn. This 
was before I learned what a comparatively 
cheap and simple matter it is to thatch the 
stacks. I notice in the English agricultural 
papers that they now have a machine in Eng¬ 
land for thatching. In fact, I suppose they have 
different kinds, for one farmer in Shropshire 
says he finds that the “ lock-stitch ” machine is 
the best. From this I conclude it is something 
on the principle of a sewing-machine. Some 
of our manufacturers should look into the mat¬ 
ter. If the machines are not too costly there 
would be an extensive demand for them. 
I am pretty well satisfied that the true plan 
is to cut up into chaff all the hay and straw 
that we feed out, to sheep, horses, and cattle. 
And if the barn is properly arranged for the 
purpose, a good plan would be to stack the hay 
in the field ; draw it to the barn in the winter; 
cut it up as we draw it, and have a carrier at¬ 
tached to the machine that would elevate the 
chaff into the bay or loft. There are, of course, 
many farms where such a plan will not work, 
but it would suit me exactly if I could arrange 
my barns and sheds so that the sheep and cows 
could be fed the chaff and roots with little labor 
in handling. 
I wish some of our barn architects would 
turn their attention to designing a barn for 
feeding on this plan, more especially for sheep. 
Nearly all our good sheep barns are designed 
for feeding long hay. But I feel sure that there 
is great economy in chaffing clover hay for 
sheep. A given space, too, will hold much 
more chaffed hay than of uncut hay, and we 
should require less barn room. Then, too, in 
feeding long hay we have to go on to the mow 
to throw down the hay every time we want to 
feed the sheep; but with chaff this is not neces¬ 
sary. It will fall of its own accord into the 
feeding-room as fast as it is removed. Can any 
one give me a description of a good sheep barn 
on this plan? I want something cheap and 
simple, with no reference to steaming—say a 
side-hill barn, that with sheds, etc., would ac¬ 
commodate 200 long-wooled sheep. 
Building Dams. 
J. II. R. and others will find their inquiries 
about the construction of dams for small streams 
answered in this article. The dams here de¬ 
scribed are suitable for streams of less than 100 
feet in width, and in which the head of water 
to be raised is not over 10 feet. They'are 
formed of timber and loose rock. The timber 
may be used in the rough, flattened slightly 
where the cross timbers rest upon each other in 
cribs such as those shown at figures 1 and 2; 
or the timber may be squared and framed to- 
