^B'JCULt 
-r/TGRICULTURf- 
ROCHESTER, N. Y.-FOR THE WEEK ENDING SATURDAY, MARCH 11, 1865, 
GETTING THROUGH "THE WINTER 
MOOKE'S RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
AN OEIGTNAL WEEKLY 
RURAL, LITERARY AND FAMILY NEWSPAPER. 
CONDUCTED BY D. D. T. MOORE, 
CHAS. D. BRAGDON, Associate Editor. 
potato. There was a great demand for grape 
sugar. I think this a question which should he 
investigated. An organization of this kind 
should raise money to look into these subjects. 
If we are annually throwing away hundreds of 
thousands and millions of dollars, it is time to 
stop it. He hoped to see the manufacture of 
cheese conducted on scientific principles, and 
this could be brought about by this association, 
if judiciously managed. He thought that lactic 
add might he extracted from the whey, and 
made an article for coagulating the milk, to be 
used instead of rennet. There was another arti¬ 
cle of commerce that could, perhaps, be manu¬ 
factured from milk-sugar, and this whs alcohol. 
He did not wish to urge the manufacture of an 
article that was regarded as having a bad tend¬ 
ency on community, but alcohol was necessary 
in the arts. All these uses of whey hold out 
more profit than is now obtained from it. He 
had seen hogs drunk on whey. Whey fed hogs 
wore subject to diarrhea and coughs ; whey made 
bad pork. 
Mr. Hamlin of Rutland had been in the habit of 
feeding whey to cows ; had fed it in this way for 
eighteen years. Feeds it to sixty cows, and 
thinks there is nutriment in it either for cows er 
hogs. Hogs fattened on it, and were sold to the 
butchers at high rates. Is in favor of feeding it 
to cows, and in his experience has never seen 
any bad results from sueh feeding. Feeds shorts 
but never during “ flush of feed.” When cows 
drop off, feed grain; thinks that, by using the 
whey, pastures hold out longer, and that a pas¬ 
ture which would, without the use of whey, 
keep but fifty cows, could keep sixty with the 
whey. Was careful not to let cows drink too 
much whey as they would drink enough to kill 
them. Old cows 15 years old, fed with whey, 
made good barrelers, aud sold for $1S when cows 
of this character not thus fed were generally 
bringing from $10 to $14. Feeding whey in¬ 
creases the flesh If not the milk, and there was a 
gain because they could be turned off to better 
advantage. Cows fed on whey are not liable to 
run dry the next year. About four pails of whey 
per cow is used daily. 
Mr. Canfield, of Champion, never fed whey 
alone, feeds rye and oats in proportion of one 
bushel of rye to four bushels of oats. When I 
commence feeding whey I use from two to four 
quarts of the grain. Do uot feed cows much 
GLEANINGS FROM LETTERS AND PAPERS 
It is a spring month, but farmers do not re¬ 
gard their stock through the winter yet. With 
mauy the question recurs. “ Shall I sell stock 
or buy liny?” The determination of this ques¬ 
tion is forced, as the hay, s raw and other forage 
disappears from the scaffolds, stacks aud bayB. 
It is a difficult question to settle. We cannot 
undertake to settle it for those of our corres¬ 
pondents who have written us on the subject. 
The price of hay, aud the market price of the 
stock you would prefer to i art with, if any, must 
be taken into the account. 
One thing is sure. It will either pay you to 
buy hay or it will not. And it will not pay to 
sacrifice the thrift and hearth of all your stock 
in order to get them through the winter, when 
by soiling a part yon can sustain the balance in 
maximum thrift. It is bettor to sacrifice on one, 
two or three animals, than to lose in the useful¬ 
ness and value of a whole herd. This we think 
the true position to take in settling this ques¬ 
tion. And the animals sacrificed should be those 
which will pay you the su idlest return for the 
money invested in thorn, ii von keep them. It 
is simply a question of calculation and figures, 
which each farmer can be? solve for himself, 
and the solution of which v ill apply to no two 
To Correspondents. — Mr. Randall' 3 address is 
Cortland Village, Cortland Co., N. Y. All communica¬ 
tions intended for thig Department, and all inquiries 
relating to sheep, should be addressed to him as above. 
HENRY S. RANDALL, LL. D. t 
Editor of the Department of Sheep Husbandry. 
SPECIAL CONTEXBUTOBS: 
P. BARRY, C. DEWET, LL. D., 
H. T. BROOKS, L. B, LANGWOTHT, 
T. 0. PETERS, EDWARD WEBSTER. 
WRINKLES ON MERINO SHEEP, 
Tub Rural New-Yorker is designed to be unsur¬ 
passed ia Value, Purity, and Variety of Contents, and 
unique and beautiful In Appearance. Its Conductor 
devotes his personal attention to the supervision of its 
various departments, and earnestly labors to render the 
Rural an eminently Reliable Guide on all the Important 
Practical, Scientific and other Subjects intimately 
connected with the buklnw- if those whose interests It 
zealously advocates. As a Family Journal It Is emi¬ 
nently Instructive and Entertaining—being so conducted 
that it can be safely taken to the Homes of people of 
intelligence, taste and discrimination. It embraces more 
Horticultural, Scientific, Educational, Literary and News 
Matter, Interspersed with appropriate Engravings, than 
any other journal,—rendering It fur the most complete 
Agricultural, Lpteraby .and Family Newspaper In 
America. 
■Bow to git Ike*. — G. of Connecticut, writes 
the Rural : — “An old gentleman told me last 
summer that his brother obtained seven swarms 
of bees in one season by fastening boxes of a foot 
square or so inside, to large, old trees such as 
they would be likely to examine in looking for a 
home, He said that in searching for a hollow in 
the tree they would find the box and take pos¬ 
session when they swarmed. The idea is new to 
me, but it looks reasonable, and if it will work j 
it is worth knowing; for I know many swarms 
skedaddle from various causes at swarming 
time—generally, however, from the ignorance 
or carelessness of their owners.” 
Why a Lift-Hand Flatc ii Best. — J. R. C.. 
Granville, ILL, gives his reasons for preferring 
the left-hand plow. Premising that the neat- 
horse is the governing horse in the team, he I 
says:—“When this horse is on ithe land and 
winding and crowding, as the best of horses will, 
to some extent, a furrow of uniform width can¬ 
not be cut—a few Inches will be lost now and 
then. But use a left-hand plow, put the near 
horse in the furrow, and he will he obliged to 
w elk straight forward. Drive him with a single 
line and confine the off-horse to his proper place 
by a jockey stick. In this way, with plows of 
equal size, the team and hand will plow more 
ground in a day with the left than it is possible 
to plow with the right-hand plow.” 
The Earliest Ibiaio.— Spencer Stone of Erie 
Co., N. Y., asks us to tell him of the earliest 
potato raised in his part of the State, and where 
he can get them. We cannot answer the ques¬ 
tions. One of Goodrich's Seedlings, called, the 
Early Goodrich, is said to be the earliest potato 
known, very good and very productive. We 
presume D. S. Refpron, Utica, N. Y., can give 
further information concerning it. S. S. Bates 
of Crawford Co., Pa., asks where the Early 
Cottage Potato can be obtained. We cannot 
tell him. “Rural,” of the Chicago Tribune 
says of the Early Y'ork Potato:—" This is one of 
f^~For Terms and other particulars, see last page. 
EFFECTS OF FEEDING WHEY, 
SORGHUM IN WESTERN NEW YORK, 
At a Cheese Convention held at Watertown 
February 1, the following communication was 
reau irom an sox r i nt, ue nuyter, Madison Co., 
N. Y. We give it as we find it in the Utica 
Herald’s report of the meeting : 
“J have found that the milk from cows that 
drink whey will sour quicker than that from 
those that do not, and, also, has a very offensive 
smell; think that it injures the cheese. I have 
saved the milk from the cows that drink whey 
and kept it separate from the milk of those that 
did not, and have found that it affects, in some 
degree, the weight of the cheese, and more its 
quality; but if grain be fed in connection with it, 
it is not so bad; think it should uot be fed to 
cows without some kind of grain with it; think 
it will not make cows give any more milk than 
good grass. One man that brought his milk to 
our factory, for some time fed his cows from two 
to t hree pails of whey per day, and then left off, 
aud his cows gave just as much milk as when he 
fed the whey, and of a better quality,—he fed no 
grain with it. Another tried an experiment, 
mixing shorts aud other feed with whey, and 
then fed the same amount of grain mixed with 
hot water, and he says that whey is not worth 
drawing two miles on a good road, and have it 
given to him.” 
Mr. Bartlett of Ohio, who was present at 
this meeting is reported to have said that he had 
fed whey four summers in succession when he 
began to notice a singular diet. Cows that were 
comparatively young began to have their teeth 
iail. On conversing with medical men he found 
that all acids are iujurious to the teeth, and that 
persons who were accustomed to use acids suf¬ 
fered from an early decay of teeth. Ho learned 
also that cows that wore led on distiller’s Blops 
were troubled in the same way. To cite an in 
stance, one of his cows, a very valuable animal, 
had to be sold at the age of eleven years, on ac¬ 
count of her teeth giving out, when if she had 
not been fed whey there would have been no dif¬ 
ficulty in keeping her up to the age of 10 or IS 
years; thought the feeding of whey to cows a 
losing operation. He fully concurred with the 
leet Sorghum growing? Aki'told fogy ism, or 
the chronic dread of stepp®_ out of the heredi¬ 
tary rut of very slow butwTe precedents, that 
keeps the New York farmtrs a generation be¬ 
hind the young ami enterprising West, in suc¬ 
cessful farming and all profitable enterprise. 
Here is a farmer from North-West Ohio who says 
his sorghum crop this season will net him $150 
an acre. He cut it up in October, stripped off 
the leaves for fodder, tied the stalks in bundles, 
and every wagon load he took to the sugar house 
gave him two barrels of air- light colored simp, 
worth a dollar a gallon at wholesale. 
The superior enterprise of the Western far¬ 
mers induced them to test the value of the 
Chinese cane as a farm crop, and their great suc¬ 
cess is now their great reward. While the New 
Y'ork farmers are paying MO cents a pound for 
sugar, aud nearly two dollars a gallon for sirup, 
all west of this State are new rejoicing in sweet¬ 
ening at about the same Cost per large family as 
it takes to make an acre of corn. 
Wherever Indian corn w ill ripen, Sorghum will 
make a maximum crop; its early growth is slower 
tbau that of Indian eoru, but it catches up with 
and outgrows it in July and August; but although 
the canes attain their norn.il sweetness the seed 
does not always ripen in com growing Western 
New York. But as the plants hear transplanting 
well, enough for seed might be started early in 
a hot-bed. 
How Much Corn :o ihc Acre. 
P. in the Rural of the lHb February says, “I 
think it about os probublo ’Jiat Baunum has got 
a part of the north pole, and is showing it in his 
museum, as that SO or 100 b^hels of eoru, shelled 
aud measured on February'tb, has been grown 
to the acre." For the last! eight years consecu¬ 
tively, JosEvii Y\ right onWaterloo has grown 
iuvariably large crops of the red cob Ohio dent 
corn, and in no one season pas he had much less 
than one hundred and fifty bushels of corn iuthe 
ear to the acre, all sound eJrn. I have proved by 
experiment with Bukritt’^s heller, that one and 
a half bushels ot these e.us made a bushel of 
shelled corn, when well if-ied. Although the 
