292 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[August, 
are more apt to get injured in transit. Tlie ob¬ 
jection to barrels is that the birds are apt to be 
much bent and twisted out of shape. They 
answer better for chickens and ducks than for 
turkeys and geese. Use rye straw if possible, 
but reject whatever is not dry and free from 
must. Place a layer of straw over the bottom 
of the box; then pack a layer of poultry, backs 
up and breasts suugly against one end of the 
box; the legs should not be cramped up under 
the body, but straightened out, taking care to 
stow suugly, filling vacancies with straw. 
Next a layer of straw, then layer of poultry as 
before, and so on until full. Have plenty of 
straw on top, so that the cover will draw down 
snugly upon the contents to prevent shifting or 
rubbing on the way. 
In packing large lots it is best to put the dif¬ 
ferent kinds in separate packages, and mark 
gross weight and tare on each package; also 
the kind contained in it. If when the lots are 
small, and different kinds are in one package, 
mark the net weight of each of the different 
kinds on the side of each package, so that we 
may know what each parcel contains without 
going through a whole lot to find what the cus¬ 
tomers want. 
Mark the address plainly on the lid of eacli 
package, also the initials or “ number” of con¬ 
signor, that we may know who tp credit the 
shipment to, and forward immediately by mail 
a full invoice giving number of packages 
shipped and net weight of each kind separ¬ 
ately. We often receive packages without the 
shipper’s name or initial on them. All such 
are sold and placed to the unknown account, 
awaiting to hear from the proper owner, which 
often gives unpleasant feeling to shippers. If 
shippers will be careful in putting their name 
or initial on every package, and send a full in¬ 
voice of each shipment, there will usually be 
no mistaking on the part of the consignee. 
Ship by express unless situated on some line 
that will be sure to carry the packages through 
nearly as quick by freight. 
Poultry designed for Thanksgiving or for 
other of the holidays should be large, fat, and 
well dressed, and should be in market at least 
two or three days before the holiday. Remem¬ 
ber that railroad and express companies are 
always crowded with freight on such occasions, 
and unless started in time it will surely arrive 
too late. Small or inferior poultry, if sent at 
all, should be sent at other times, as the de¬ 
mand then is almost exclusively for large, fat, 
and nice poultry. 
Ogden Farm Papers.—No. 42. 
In the June number of this series (No. 40) 
there was given an account of the performances 
of Mr. Robeson’s herd of Jerseys. In that ac¬ 
count the quantity of butter that would have 
been made had all the cream been used was 
estimated at 407 lbs per cow per annum. I 
have now received from Mr. Robeson an actual 
report for the month of April, which forms a 
natural sequel to the former statement, as it 
gives the exact yield of butter per quart of cream 
on the average of the herd. 
The total production of milk for the month 
was 4,735£ lbs. There were 11 animals milked; 
4 of these were 2-year old heifers, and 1 cow 
was drying off for calving. 5 cows were milked 
the whole month, and 6 cows only a portion of 
the month. The lactometer showed an average 
percentage of cream of 14 9J /io». 3,440i lbs of 
fresh milk was fed to calves. The remaining 
1,295 lbs of milk was equal (at 2 ,6 / 100 lbs) to say 
602 quarts. Of this there was used (fresh) in 
the house 30 quarts. The remainder, 572 quarts, 
was set for cream. The lactometer rate called 
for 85i quarts of cream. There were actually 
skimmed 93£ quarts of this, 22£ quarts were 
used by the family, and the remainder (71 quarts) 
was churned. The product of butter was 
707,6 lbs, being 1 lb butter to quarts of 
milk, in an experiment with 469 quarts. Sup¬ 
posing the actual skimming of the milk of the 
whole herd to have exceeded my estimate (June 
No.) in the same proportion as shown above 
(86i to 934) then each cow of the herd during the 
previous year should have yielded not 430 quarts 
of cream per cow as there stated, but 470 quarts, 
and should have made an average not of 407 lbs. 
of butter per cow, but of 445 lbs; so that my 
computation was well within the mark. 
A correspondent in Chillicotlie, Ohio, says he 
has tried the deep can system and likes it. He 
asks whether our milk ever sours in 24 hours, 
and if not, whether we sour the cream before 
churning. Neither. The milk, at a tempera¬ 
ture of 50°, keeps sweet even for 36 hours when 
we allow it to stand that long, and we keep the 
cream sweet (by keeping it cool) until it is 
churned. 
I am often asked whether Jersey cattle have 
not the objection that they have a large pre¬ 
ponderance of bull calves. This has not been 
our experience; nor, so far as an extensive cor¬ 
respondence with Jersey breeders allows me to 
judge, has it been the experience with most 
others. I think accurate statistics would show 
that in this breed as in other breeds of cattle 
(and as in the human race) there are on the 
average about 105 females born to each 100 
males. This year, thus far, we have had 24 
calves—18 of them heifers. To maintain my 
proportion we shall probably have our luck run 
the other way before many years; and then, if 
we are like the rest of our fellows, we shall 
grumble so audibly that the world will think Jer¬ 
sey cows have heifer calves only by exception. 
A paragraph has been going the rounds of 
the papers about some marvelous butter making 
iu Illinois. So and so many hundred pounds 
were made iu a day; the whole milk was 
churned twice a day, just as it came from the 
udder; a steam-engine did this, and a steam- 
engine did that; and the wonderful result in 
quantity of butter made, to say nothing of the 
quality—which was the best ever sent to the 
Eastern markets—was to throw all the old-fash¬ 
ioned processes into the back-ground. There 
was no setting of milk in shallow pans to be 
cooled by exposure to the air, nor in deep cans 
to be cooled by the contact of water—no mak¬ 
ing of airy milk-rooms nor of cool cellars—but, 
slap dash ! milk your cows, pour the milk into 
a mammoth churn, turn on the steam, light 
your pipe, and there you are ! You have only 
to wait comfortably for the mass of butter 
which you will put into a steam butter worker, 
when all the buttermilk will be squeezed out of 
it, and when it will be made ready for the pant¬ 
ing locomotive to whisk off to market. Verily 
here was a revolution. The romance of dairy¬ 
ing is gone; and the rosy maid, with her well 
washed arms bare to the shoulder, may roll down 
her sleeves, and apply herself to the steam- 
driven sewing-machine in a stove-heated room 
now, and be happy. After this account had been 
sent me from several sources, like the French¬ 
man, “Zen I began to sospec somesiug,” and I 
wrote to the journal iu which the marvel first 
appeared and got from its editor the address of 
the proprietors of this really remarkable dairy— 
Messrs. I. Boies & Son, Marengo, Ill. I wrote 
to them asking what was the truth of the mat¬ 
ter, and have received the following very satis¬ 
factory reply: “ There is but a small part of the 
article that is correct. We keep a dairy of 135 
cows,which we intend to have come in in the 
fall—September and October. These cows 
give milk 10 mouths and would give longer, 
but we take pains to let them go dry 60 days. 
You will perceive that we do not make much 
butter in hot weather. We would here say that 
we buy 4,000 lbs. of milk per day of our neigh¬ 
bors. They deliver as much milk in winter as 
in summer. Our cows are fed 8 quarts of corn 
and oatmeal (mixed) per day for every day they 
give milk. Iu winter we give them every day 
in addition to the meal a large load of corn in 
the shuck, also what nice early cut hay they 
will consume. (You will perceive that we have 
a good manure heap.) The milk is set as soon 
as it is drawn in the common 10-quart pan. 
As soon as it is sour it is churned immediately. 
We use the Swan-box churn. Churn every day, 
Sundays excepted. We make about 300 lbs. of 
butter per cow, which brings us 40c. per lb. at 
home. 
“ The sour milk we feed to hogs which we 
find very profitable—low as hogs are. This 
manner of farming brings land up to a very 
good state of fertility. Our corn last year pro¬ 
duced 100 bushels per acre. We are all poor 
farmers compared with what we ought to be. 
We have 350 acres of land. We intend soon to 
feed clover cut green to our cows. Corn and 
oatmeal costs us $15 per ton. We use a white- 
ash inclined-plane butter-worker. Butter 'is 
taken from the churn salted, set for 24 hours, 
then worked and packed. We make about 250 
lbs. per day.” 
There! that is the whole story, and a very 
satisfactory story it is, too. The old customs 
are not so ruthlessly set aside as the paragraph- 
maker would have us believe. This butter is 
made very much in the “good old way,” and 
there is no doubt that it is well made and of 
uniform quality. The Messrs. Boies are “ poor 
farmers compared with what they ought to be,” 
they modestly saj\ Would that there were 
more such “poor farmers” all over the land. 
The manure made by 135 cows, fed as these are, 
must pile up a heap that will make itself felt on 
350 acres of land—especially when supplemen¬ 
ted by the droppings of hogs enough to consume 
not only the home-made milk but 4,000 lbs. a 
day of purchased milk besides. Now, why 
won’t some of our agricultural colleges teach 
their young men how to follow this example ? 
how to invest capital in such a safe and surely 
profitable business, and to manage it with skill 
and economy. The market for such butter as 
may thus be made will never fail to be a paying 
one, and such a course of cultivation is bound 
to make any ordinarily good farmer to “ blossom 
like the rose,” and with more and more roses 
every year. An enterprise of this sort need 
not be confined to the West. There are thou¬ 
sands of Eastern farms on which it would be 
equally successful, for the higher price of butter 
and pork would easily balance the higher cost of 
grain. Let us have it tried. It is not necessary 
to start on such a large scale. Any young man 
with 50 acres of land and a moderate capital can 
easily build up even a larger business in time. 
