1892 
THE  RURAL  NEW-YORKER 
1 15 
he  :  “  Make  an  article  you  are  not  ashamed  of  and  then 
put  your  label  on  it.  The  consumer  will  come  hack 
for  more.” 
“Do  farmers  adulterate  maple  syrup?”  I  asked. 
“No!  They  do  not;  yet  no  pure  syrup  ever  goes 
west  of  Chicago  unless  to  some  friend.  Some  pure 
sugar  sent  to  Colorado  netted  21  cents.” 
The  Sugar  Makers’  Association  in  Ohio  has  obtained  a 
aw  that  compels  sugar  makers  to  label  and  guarantee 
the  quality  of  their  product.  Such  a  law,  if  general 
and  enforced,  would  add  25  cents  per  gallon  to  the 
price,  as  not  enough  pure  syrup  for  a  taste  to  each 
inhabitant  is  made  in  the  United  States.  It  is  adult¬ 
erated  after  it  leaves  the  farmers’  hands. 
“  What  is  a  fair  yield  per  tree,”  I  asked. 
“  A  safe  average  is  from  two  to  four  quarts.  This 
sells  at  SI  per  gallon,  and  my  receipts  are  from  $40  to 
$80  per  acre  at  the  ordinary  price.  There  is  no  ex¬ 
pense  for  summering  or  wintering  the  trees.  One 
season’s  make  will  pay  for  the  entire  outfit.  In  this 
hilly  country  the  loose,  gravelly  soil  is  washed  by 
every  rain  into  the  valleys  until  the  knolls  are  barren 
and  the  crops  on  them  poor.  They  should  not  be 
plowed.  I  believe  it  would  pay  to  set  out  maple 
orchards.  ” 
On  our  way  to  the  depot  Mr.  Fellows  showed  me  a 
farm  of  200  acres  which  the  owner,  a  city  man,  offers 
for  $4,000.  It  has  1,500  maple  trees  in  fine  shape.  Said 
he:  “I  could  make  that  grove  pay  for  the  farm  in  a 
few  years.’’  c.  e.  chapman. 
Effects  of  Food  on  the  Dairy  Cow. 
IS  NOT  FEED  GREATER  THAN  BREED? 
[Extracts  from  a  paper  delivered  by  Prof.  I.  P.  Roberts  before  the 
Ontario  Dairymen’s  Association  on  January  7—8. 1892.] 
(Concluded.) 
What  Will  the  Animal  do  With  its  Food  ? 
Suppose  we  take  a  dairy  cow  in  full  milk,  that  has 
been  moderately  fed,  and  increase  her  daily  food  in 
quantity  and  improve  it  in  quality,  what 
will  she  do  with  it  ?  She  can  use  only  so 
much  for  support ;  she  has  eaten  far 
more  than  she  needs  for  that  purpose, 
and  so  she  seeks  immediately  to  do  some¬ 
thing  with  it.  If  she  has  been  injured 
by  injudicious  overfeeding  in  calfhood, 
the  chances  are  that  she  will  not  increase 
her  yield  of  milk,  but  lay  on  flesh  and  fat. 
If  from  injudicious  feeding  or  from  want 
of  feed,  she  has  been  allowed  to  go  dry 
earlier  than  she  should,  the  extra  feed 
will  have  only  a  slight  effect  in  arresting 
the  tendency  to  go  dry  at  the  time  she 
usually  has  done  so.  She  must  do  some¬ 
thing  with  her  food ;  she  cannot  make 
more  milk  with  it  because  the  power  to 
increase  in  milk  production  has  been 
bred  or  rather  fed  out  of  her,  and  the 
power  to  put  on  flesh  has  been  fed  into 
her.  If  we  take  another  animal  that  has 
been  properly  raised  and  handled  in  her  heiferhood, 
and  increase  her  feed  when  in  full  milk  she,  too,  will 
do  something  with  the  increased  food,  and  since  she 
has  never  learned  to  make  beef  of  it,  although  she 
may  never  have  given  a  large  amount  of  milk,  the 
chances  always  are  that  she  will  increase  her  milk 
product  with  the  extra  food,  and  when  she  has  eaten 
all  she  can  use  for  milk  production,  she  will  refuse  to 
eat  more,  and  by  this  method  we  have  arrived  at  the 
capacity  of  our  cow  for  producing  milk. 
Accounts  Must  be  Kept. 
The  dairy  has  been  summoned  to  judgment ;  the 
scales  and  the  fat  tester  sit  on  the  bench,  and  every 
cow  is  to  be  weighed  in  the  balance,  and,  if  found  want¬ 
ing,  she  goes  to  the  left  and  travels  that  broad  road 
which  leads  to  death.  The  blue  bloods  of  the  herd 
book  are  also  called  to  judgment  and  if  they  are  found 
wanting,  they  too  must  go  down  with  the  plebeian 
throng  to  the  abbatoir.  And  let  them  not  say  within 
themselves:  “  We  have  thoroughbreds  as  our  parents;” 
for  I  say  unto  you  that  out  of  these  feed  bins  the  dairy 
man  shall  be  able  to  raise  up  cows  unto  thoroughbred¬ 
ness.  Behold  the  cleaver  is  laid  in  front  of  the  feed 
troughs  and  where  the  cattle  come  down  to  drink,  and 
every  cow  that  bringeth  forth  not  paying  results  shall 
be  hewn  down  and  cast  into  the  hash-mill. 
Judicious  Feeding. 
The  calf  should  be  kept  growing  from  the  day  of 
its  birth  till  maturity,  and  the  two  extremes  of  over 
and  underfeeding  should  be  intelligently  avoided. 
Lack  of  nutrition  must  always  be  distinguished  from 
healthy  growth,  and  healthy  growth  from  fatness.  As 
between  over  and  underfeeding  the  latter  is  prefer¬ 
able.  A  calf  overfed  until  two  years  old  is  almost  cer¬ 
tainly  ruined,  and  always  injured  ;  while  a  calf  under¬ 
fed  will  have  its  milking  qualities  only  slightly  in¬ 
jured  and  its  normal  size  perceptibly  reduced.  This 
in  some  cases  may  act  beneficially  in  reducing  the  size 
of  animals  which  are  inclined  to  be  too  large,  and  if 
the  after  feeding  is  correct  and  the  food  liberal,  no 
serious  injury  will  occur,  especially  if  the  heifer  is  bred 
young  and  correctly  fed  during  her  entire  first  milking 
season.  The  skill  in  feeding  the  heifer  in  her  two  and 
three-year-old  form,  especially  in  the  former,  will  de¬ 
termine  most  certainly  the  character  of  the  future 
cow.  It  should  be  remembered  that  specialized  and 
added  qualities  desired  cannot  be  bred  into  the  cow  in 
one  year  or  one  generation.  Just  here  is  where  much 
false  reasoning  and  more  erroneous  practices  prevail. 
If  food  is  so  potent,  it  is  said  that  all  we  have  to  do  is 
to  increase  the  quantity  and  improve  the  quality,  and 
the  problem  of  stock  improvement  is  immediately 
solved  ;  but  it  is  never  solved  in  that  way,  and  can  be 
only  by  a  steady,  judicious  increase  of  food  with  im¬ 
provement  in  its  quality,  sometimes  through  several 
generations,  and  it  matters  not  whether  we  start  from 
a  poor  or  a  good  animal,  the  problem  of  permanent  im¬ 
provement  must  always  be  solved  by  a  steady,  uniform 
effort,  and  not  by  spasmodic  attempts.  No  man  but  a 
fool  would  start  with  poor  animals  when  better  ones 
could  be  secured  at  reasonable  cost ;  he  would  be  still 
more  unwise  if  he  did  not  preserve  those  animals  which 
lie  deemed  best ;  but  while  doing  this  it  must  be  kept 
in  mind  that  selection  is  but  an  opportunity  to  procui-e 
what  has  already  been  produced — you  cannot  run  a 
dairy  on  selection.  Pedigrees  are  good,  but  they,  too, 
will  not  run  a  dairy.  It  must  be  run  with  animals 
which  can  eat,  digest  and  assimilate  large  amounts 
of  food  and  economically  turn  it  into  milk  solids.  If 
the  ancestors  of  the  animals  which  do  the  profitable 
work  of  the  dairy  were  alike  efficient,  then  so  much 
the  better.  Since  we  haven’t  these  animals  at  hand  in 
sufficient  numbers  for  all  the  dairies,  we  must  breed 
them,  an  easy  task  if  a  few  simple  rules  are  followed. 
Having  spent  many  years  in  studying  the  problems 
of  the  dairy,  I  am  led  to  the  following  conclusions : 
That  our  progress  in  dairy  husbandry  has  been  slow, 
The  wise  man;  the  bi«  meal  bln;  the  Babcock  test;  the  scales;  a  shot  Run. 
because  we  began  at  the  wrong  end  of  the  subject. 
We  have  been  mourning  over  the  loss  of  a  few  “  float¬ 
ing  curds,”  and  that  was  well ;  but  is  it  well  to  let  our 
vision  be  so  blinded  with  tears  at  that  loss  as  to  be  un¬ 
able  to  see  the  amount  and  kind  of  milk  the  cow  pro¬ 
duces  ?  We  have  worried  the  very  life  out  of  the  cheese- 
maker  because  he  allowed  a  pound  of  butter  fat  per 
cow  a  year  to  escape  with  the  whey,  when  a  tithe  of 
the  skill  and  thought  required  to  prevent  even  a  por¬ 
tion  of  this  loss,  if  expended  on  the  feeding  of  the  cow, 
would  have  added  100  pounds  of  butter  fats  for  the 
one  lost.  We  have  been  like  the  man  sitting  on 
the  river  bank  so  intent  on  gathering  the  straws  float¬ 
ing  by  that  he  had  neither  eyes  to  see  nor  hands  to 
grasp  the  bundles,  a  single  one  of  which  contained 
thousands  of  precious  grains.  For  nearly  a  score  of 
years  we  have  been  trying  to  improve  the  quality  of 
our  “goods,”  and  have  made  some  progress,  but 
in  those  20  years  90  per  cent  of  all  cows  have  vir¬ 
tually  remained  at  the  old  standard  of  production. 
Yet  it  would  not  have  been  half  as  difficult  to  have 
raised  the  total  product  of  the  butter  fats  of  these  cows 
100  per  cent  as  to  have  taught  the  people  how  to  guess 
at  the  right  time  of  “  drawing  the  whey.” 
I  conclude  that  we  have  been  so  anxious  about 
“getting”  the  English  market  that  we  have  forgotten 
the  fact  that  we  have  been  feeding  and  milking,  and 
housing  two  cows  to  do  the  work  of  one.  We  have 
been  straining  at  an  oil  globule  and  swallowing  two 
cows.  I  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  it  will  take 
six  McKinley  Bills,  three  earthquakes  and  a  cyclone  to 
make  the  dairymen  of  Canada  and  the  United  States 
run  their  dairies  on  anything  like  a  common -sense 
basis.  In  12  years  any  man  in  Canada  can  have  a  good 
dairy  and  that  too  without  purchasing  a  single  pedi¬ 
greed  animal.  If  he  knows  how  to  select  from  the 
thoroughbreds  he  may  build  a  better  dairy  and  in 
somewhat  less  time.  In  either  case  five  things  are 
necessary  ;  a  man,  a  full  meal  bin,  a  fat  tester,  a  cor¬ 
rect  balance  and  a  shot  gun. 
Forkfuls  of  Facts. 
Wanted  !  A  good  reason  why  a  dairyman  should 
feed  Timothy  hay  when  he  can  sell  it  for  horse  feed  ? 
What  is  the  best  material  for  a  stable  floor  ?  Is  any¬ 
thing  better  than  spent  tan  bark,  first  last  and  all  the 
time  ?  Make  it  six  inches  deep  or  more,  and  renew 
the  top  layer  from  time  to  time.  It  makes  a  soft, 
yielding  bed,  gives  a  horse  good  life  and  is  excellent 
for  the  hoofs.  c.  s.  robinson. 
They  Were  Dishorned. — In  volume  3(5  of  the  Short¬ 
horn  Herd  Hook  are  two  entries  that  would  indicate 
that  they  represented  naturally  hornless  individuals. 
They  are  named  Mulley  Queen  I  and  II.  It  seems,  how¬ 
ever,  that  they  are  not  naturally  polled.  I  learn  so 
much  from  their  breeder,  I.  C.  Claybrook,  Washington, 
Ky.,  who  thus  writes,  in  reply  to  an  inquiry  :  “  I  have 
no  naturally  hornless  cattle.  I  dishorned  those  so 
named  when  young,  having  read  that  by  so  doing 
in  the  course  of  generations  the  horns  would  fail  to 
appear  and  that  the  cattle  would  eventually  be  mulleys. 
Having  found  that  the  animals  are  much  less  vicious 
towards  each  other  when  hornless,  I  shall  continue  to 
take  off  the  horns.”  R.  c.  A. 
If  we  are  to  use  the  best  tools  for  butter  making  we 
must  get  the  best  price  for  the  butter.  We  can,  how¬ 
ever,  make  poor  butter  with  good  tools. 
It  does  not  take  any  longer  to  milk  a  cow  for  50-cent 
butter  than  for  10-cent.  I  filled  a  large  silo  last  fall. 
The  ensilage  kept  well  except  about  two  inches  on 
top.  It  is  the  finest  kind  of  stuff  for  cows.  M.  G. 
I  answered  an  advertisement  of  the  Detroit  Oil  Meal 
Works  and  the  result  was  that  I  used  four  tons  of  the 
meal  to  great  advantage.  I  thought  my 
horses  did  better  on  meal,  with  an  equal 
bulk  of  bran,  than  on  oats.  L.  J.  c. 
Feeding  Dried  Brewers’  Grains. — E. 
L.  S.,  North  Truro,  Mass. — We  are 
going  to  try  feeding  dried  brewers’  grains 
to  milch  cows.  How  shall  we  feed  them? 
A  common  ration  here  has  been  about 
two  quarts  of  corn  meal  with  from  two  to 
four  quarts  of  fine  wheat  feed.  I  have  on 
hand  corn  meal,  fine  feed,  bran,  and  oil 
meal. 
Ans. — A  mixture  of  two  parts  (by 
weight)  of  dried  brewers’  grains,  with 
one  part  of  corn  meal,  will  give  you  very 
nearly  a  perfect  ration — nearly  enough 
for  practical  purposes.  Equal  parts,  by 
weight,  of  dried  grains,  new-process  oil 
meal,  fine  middlings  and  corn  meal 
mixed,  will  also  give  a  very  good  ration. 
The  nutritive  ratios  of  the  foods  named 
are  as  follows:  Dried  grains,  3.3;  new-process  oil  meal 
1.3  ;  wheat  middlings,  4.7  ;  corn  meal,  9.8.  If  you  are 
feeding  clover  hay  with  these  foods,  you  are  all  right ; 
if  ensilage  or  stalks,  you  will  need  to  add  a  little 
more  of  the  nitrogenous  foods,  the  grains  or  oil  meal ; 
and  if  good  meadow  hay,  the  same,  though  to  a  less 
degree. 
Tuberculosis  or  Consumption  in  Milch  Cows. — At 
the  annual  meeting  of  the  New  Castle  County  Farmers’ 
Institute,  held  January  18,  at  Delaware  College  in 
Newark,  Del.,  there  were  between  250  and  300  farmers 
present.  An  object  lesson  and  a  discussion  of  tuber¬ 
culosis  or  consumption  in  milch  cows  were  given.  Two 
animals  affected  with  the  disease  were  exhibited,  and 
Dr.  II.  P.  Eves,  Professor  of  Veterinary  Science  in 
Delaware  College,  gave  an  explanation  of  the  char¬ 
acteristic  symptoms  during  life.  Afterwards  the  ani¬ 
mals  were  slaughtered  and  a  demonstration  was  made 
of  the  vital  organs.  One  of  the  animals  was  a  large, 
purebred  Holstein  cow  that  had  been  secured  from  a 
herd  in  Chester,  Pa.  The  other  was  a  small  animal,  a 
grade  Jersey,  which  had  a  large  tubercle  upon  her 
jaw.  vShe  was  in  very  poor  condition  and  plainly 
showed  by  outward  indications  that  she  was  diseased, 
while  the  Holstein,  having  received  good  care,  gave 
little  indication  of  disease.  In  fact,  nearly  every  per¬ 
son  present,  among  whom  were  several  butchers,  said 
there  was  nothing  the  matter  with  her  and  were  very 
greatly  surprised  when  the  body  was  opened  to  find 
the  lungs  very  badly  diseased.  The  numerous  large 
tubercles  scattered  over  the  flesh  in  the  body  gave  it  a 
very  disgusting  appearance.  The  small  animal  gave 
scarcely  any  internal  evidence  of  the  disease  when  dis¬ 
sected,  the  lungs  being  but  slightly  affected.  It  was  a 
valuable  object-lesson,  plainly  showing  how  easily  the 
ordinary  observer  may  be  deceived  by  outward  ap¬ 
pearance.  After  the  slaughtered  animals  had  been 
thoroughly  examined,  a  letter  in  regard  to  the  disease, 
from  Dr.  Laws,  of  Cornell  University,  was  read.  Dr. 
Eves  then  delivered  an  interesting  address,  giving  in 
Five  Planks  in  the  Good  Dairyman’s  Platform.  Fig.  73. 
