VOL. LII. No. 2289. 
NEW YORK DECEMBER 9, 1893. 
PRICE, THREE CENTS. 
$t.oo PER YEAR. 
A MILKMAN’S NOTES. 
SUMMER ENSILAGE, SOILING CROPS, MORE MILK ! 
I would answer the questions about feeding 1 ensilage 
in summer as follows : We have never fed fall-made 
ensilage in the summer. Our silo is large enough 
only for our winter feeding. Fall-made ensilage, I 
presume, would supply as good summer feed as green 
soiling crops, with the advantage of more economical 
handling. We feed no grain during the summer 
period of green crops, unless in exceptional cases. We 
can maintain a flow of eight quarts per cow in milk 
in a mixed herd of bought, traded, home-bred and 
weeded cows coming fresh all months of the year. 
The same thing can, no doubt, be done with fall-made 
ensilage fed in summer. Experiments go to show that 
there is no profitable gain in feeding grain to cows 
having a sufficient quantity of nutritive green feed. 
“ For the production of milk and fat there is no food 
so cheap as good pasture grass.” (Bulletin 52, Cor^ 
nell Agricultural Experiment Station.) I believe en 
silage and green fodders to be the best substitutes for 
“ gcod pasture grass ” for sea¬ 
sons of the year when it is un¬ 
attainable, and upon farms 
not well adapted to the pro¬ 
duction of a sufficient supply 
of “ good pasture grass.” 
t t t 
The questions cannot be ad¬ 
equately answered in brief. 
They open up a wide field. 
Why should we build an extra 
silo to hold fall-made ensilage 
for summer feeding when the 
winter silo emptied in May 
may be refilled in early July 
for immediate feeding, with 
crops grown after April 1. 
The ground upon which the 
winter ensilage corn grew, 
may be sown April 1 with oats 
and peas, which will be ready 
to cut for the silo, July 1. In 
this way, one silo and one 
piece of ground may do the 
work of two silos and two 
pieces of ground. After the 
oats and peas, may come Hun¬ 
garian to be followed by 
winter grain. We experi¬ 
mented this summer by sub¬ 
stituting for oats and peas in 
a three-acre field of green 
crops, two acres of oats, spring 
rye and vetch. But this crop did not do very well and 
I shall sow only oats and peas next spring. We 
went around the three acres with the mowing 
machine, poked three swaths into a windrow with 
forks, pitched it upon the wagon from the windrow 
and carted it to the silo, July 11 and 12. The crop was 
late this year. It was good hay weather and some of 
it dried too much in lying two or three hours. When 
put in, it was half way between hay and green fodder. 
The silo is 14 x 14 feet inside. We covered one-half, 
cut it down with the hay knife and fed from the other 
side immediately, but it soon began to mold. Then 
we ran it through the cutter daily, mixed one bushel 
wet with three quarts of wheat feed twice a day per 
cow and made it last until August 1, with an increase 
in the flow of milk and with no apparent deterioration 
in quality. 
I think summer-made ensilage is feasible, and intend 
to try it next year with oats and peas, but would not 
advise putting half cured hay into a silo. The hand¬ 
ling of a green crop all at once is more economical 
than the daily handling of the soiling system. Yet 
the cost of handling soiling crops is over estimated. 
The manual labor of handling green crops during a 
season is quite heavy, but much of the team work part 
fits in with other jobs. The team is seldom hitched 
up and driven to the field just for the daily fodder. It 
brings in a load when coming from plowing or when 
carting hay. Let those who object to soiling remem¬ 
ber that the number of foot pounds required to lift 
the annual soiling crop does not equal by a good deal 
the number of dollars to foot the meal bill in place 
Now, about the yield of milk. I am aware that 
eight quarts per cow in milk is not a large yield. But 
I know of a herd of 100 cows in this county which 
produces only 300 quarts of milk per day. It takes 
200,000 cows to make 280,000,000 quarts of milk for 
New York city annually. Although one of the rivu¬ 
lets that flow into that great river contributes 100,000 
quarts from 40 cows. 
Prof. H. H. Wing, of the Cornell Experiment 
Station, in his very valuable bulletin, No. 52, above 
referred to, says : “ The University herd * * * has 
been developed from the ordinary stock of the neigh¬ 
borhood by the use of thoroughbred bulls and a rigid 
selection of the best heifer calves. This course of 
breeding was established by Professor Roberts in 
1875, and has continued ever since. The year previous 
the yield of the cows upon the farm had been a little 
more than 3,000 pounds per cow. The descendants of 
these same cows * * * produced in 1802 more than 
7,000 pounds per cow.” Here is a good point of depar¬ 
ture from which to discourse upon the relative ad¬ 
vantages of breeding and buying cows to replenish 
the herd. k. c. birge. 
That Cream Question. —Evidently the trouble with 
A. R.’s cteam, page 780, is that it is too cold and in¬ 
sufficiently ripe. He should use but one cream pail 
holding two days’ skimming, and when the last one is 
put in at night, bring the cream up into a moderately 
warm room, heat it up by a warm water bath to 70 
degrees, let it stand there until the next morning, and 
then churn it at from 6(5 to 68 degrees, a. ii. goopkich. 
MILLET VS. CLOVER HAY. 
WILL THE FORMER MAKE THIN MILK? 
A correspondent writes that when he changed cows 
from clover hay to millet hay, the cream at once be¬ 
came very thin, and asked if the hay caused the cows 
to give less fat in the milk, or to cream less perfectly. 
Without more definite information, this is a difficult 
question to answer, as the word thin may mean scanty 
cream or very limpid cream. The latter might pro¬ 
duce as much butter as thick cream, there being 
greater bulk, and more fluid in it, not fats, than when 
the cream was solid like a blanket. If there is little 
cream, this would put an entirely different construc¬ 
tion upon it, and the inquiry would need to take into 
account the food and feeding, and the creaming of the 
milk as well. So the answer to this correspondent 
must at best be a guess. 
Millet hay and clover hay do not differ greatly in 
composition, and millet has a great reputation among 
dairymen as a good milk-stimulating food. Up to the 
time I commenced to use ensilage, millet was a favor¬ 
ite crop with me for milk- 
production, and I think that 
the thin cream is not directly 
chargeable to the millet, if it 
was judiciously fed. Millet 
has this peculiarity, that if its 
feeding is not approached 
gradually, it has a somewhat 
irritating effect upon the kid¬ 
neys, and the cows at first are 
passing abnormal quantities 
of urine, and it may be that 
the falling off in cream was 
due to a temporary derange¬ 
ment of the system of the 
cow, and this in turn caused 
a slight physical change in 
character—not composition— 
of the milk, and the relations 
of all the solids to the weight 
of milk as well as the cream¬ 
ing conditions, were changed. 
Hence the thin cream for 
a while, until Nature again 
righted the balance. This 
may be fine spun, but there 
is nothing in the composition 
of millet hay that would cause 
any loss of fats in the milk 
unless by injudicious feed¬ 
ing, the change from clover to 
millet were too abrupt, and the 
effect were to derange the sec¬ 
retory organs of the cow. If it were in the creaming, 
then it is probable that if the milk were diluted with 
hot water until a temperature of 100 or 105 degrees was 
reached and the cans were at once plunged up to their 
ears in ice water at 40 degrees, the fats by this sud¬ 
den “change of weather” would all have been forced 
to the surface. Yet it would have been in one sense, 
thin cream, and in another thick, for in a 20-inch can 
there would have been a four or five inch thickness 
of cream to make the dividing line of milk and sep¬ 
arated fats. As I said before this reply can be noth¬ 
ing more than a guess, yet possibly it may suggest 
the idea that may result in a remedy. JOHN gourd. 
R. N.-Y.—Mr. Gould’s statement that clover and 
millet hays do not differ much in composition, may at 
first seem strange to some of our readers, but it is a 
fact. Average clover contains a little more protein 
and fat than average millet, but less carbohydrates. 
So that, chemically considered, milletisgrod cow hay, 
Speaking of the matter of handling milk and cream, 
the recent question under “ What Say?’’has called 
out some very interesting experiences, 
