au s. 
MOORE’S RURAL NEW-YORKER 
gaii[K guabandrj. 
DAIRY NOTES ON VIRGINIA. IV. 
The Catoetin Mountain runs from north 
to south and is parallel to the Ulna Ridge. 
It has a low range of elevation, with sloping 
sides admitting for the most part of cultiva¬ 
tion either in grass or grain, and there are 
farms on its summit. Mount Gilead is the 
highest point of the mountain, and hem is 
located ft little hamlet. We rode over the 
mountain and along “the backbone" of the 
ridge to get a view of the valley and the sur¬ 
rounding country. A wide uud most de¬ 
lightful prospect is had from the higher ele¬ 
vations of the Catoetin. Here can be seen 
the farms spread out like a map, and in the 
far distance a long line of the Glue Ridge, 
the top crowned with a thin, misty blue, 
from which the Ridge derives its name. 
THE BROWN FARM. 
On our return from the Oatoctin we called 
on several farmers, spending some little time 
at the farm of Mr. W.u. Ilnow.v and that of 
his brother in the same neighborhood. Mr. 
Brown has 320 acres, 00 of which are in 
meadow, 40 acres in pasture, <50 in wheat , 30 
in com, and the balance is in timber. The 
soil is a rather stiff clay. The underlying 
rock is mostly of slate, and it is found crop¬ 
ping out in various parts of the farm. It is 
called by the farmers “rotten stone,” on 
account of its soft, flaky nature, readily dis¬ 
solving when exposed to the atmosphere and 
forming a soil of characteristic fertility. Mr. 
Brows has a small dairy of 11 cows. Wheat 
usually yields at the rate of 20 bushels to the 
acre and corn .it) bushels. The production 
of hay is at the rate of one and 1 ’ . t ons to 
the acre in ordinary seasons. On one of the 
fields near the farm buildings, Mr. Brown 
had a very heavy piece of Hover which was 
in blossom, and which he had commenced 
to cut about the 2()th of May. 
The system of farming here is to grow 
wheat and eorn alternately for four years 
and then seed down to grass. The first crop 
on breaking grass lands is corn ; this is fol¬ 
lowed by wheat, then a crop of eorn and 
finally wheat, when the land is seeded at the 
rate of live quarts clover and four quarts 
timothy seed to the acre. 
The kind of corn esteemed here as the best 
is known as the Crinkling variety. It is light 
colored, the kernels long and set very com¬ 
pactly on the Cob. Wheat is usually put iu 
with a drill at the rate of I V bushels seed lo 
the acre, and superphosphate, or some form 
of commercial fertilizer, isusud to help make 
the crop. *» 
Mr. Brown has only recently commenced 
to keep cows for dairy purposes, and says fie 
regards the Imsiness as nuieh more profitable 
than grain farming; hut he finds milking 
objectionable, as it is difficult to get bauds 
who will attend to the matter regularly and 
do the work in the proper manner. The con¬ 
stant supervision necessary in the dairy is 
irksome, and this he regards as the most 
important objection to dairying in Virginia. 
The colored people who are employed as la¬ 
borers are unaccustomed to milking and do 
not generally like it and, like the majority 
of raw hands, must be closely watched or 
they neglect to draw the milk thoroughly 
and this fault, if continued for any length of 
time, injures or perhaps destroys the. useful¬ 
ness of the cows. We told Mr. Brown that 
many Northern dairymen thought it no par¬ 
ticular hardship to go into the stable night 
and morning and milk from 111 to 15 cows, 
and not uufrequently, when milkers were 
short, 20 cows were taken as a morning or 
evening recreation. But Mr. B. was not 
inclined to regard milking as u pleasing ope¬ 
ration. urging that his lingers were apt to 
give out in the repeated manipulation re¬ 
quired to expel the lacteal fluid, and there¬ 
fore the milking business was one which he 
could not be said to “hanker after.” 
OTHER FARMS. 
Among other farms visited in this neigh¬ 
borhood was that of Samuel Brown and T. 
R. .Smith. The former has an elegant resi¬ 
dence and fine-looking farm, where grain¬ 
growing is the leading business. The system 
of culture is very similar to that previously 
described. Here we examined with some 
interest a large field of wheat, where a por¬ 
tion hud been treated with commercial fer¬ 
tilizers (vitriolized bones) and a part left with¬ 
out manures. The dillereuoe in the two was 
marked, the boned wheat being of a darker 
green and a heavier stand. The land iu the 
whole field was of a uniform quality and had 
been treated precisely alike except in the 
application of the commercial fertilizer, and 
Mr. Brown thought the gain in yield from 
- 
the use of the fertilizer would more than pay 
the extra cost of manuring. 
At Mr. T. it. Smith’s farm wo found some 
fine cows, Jerseys and Short-Horns, some of 
the former indicating from the shape and 
size of the Udder as well as the escutcheon, 
& superior milking strain. Mr. S. is a but¬ 
ter dairyman, and likes the Jerseys, though 
recently lie has introduced the Short Horns 
in liis herd. 
AMOS HUOHS' FARM. 
This farm lies at the font of the Catoetin 
Mountain, about 2!£ miles from Hamilton, 
and contains 250 tie res, divided up us fol¬ 
lows :—so acres in pasture, 25 acres mead¬ 
ows, 40 acres wheat, 25 acres in corn and 50 
acres in timber. The yield of wheat is at 
the rate of 20 bushels to the acre and corn 
45 bushels. Mr. Hi uhh has a herd of 20 
cows, mostly native stock, which he crosses 
with an Alderney bull. He delivers his milk 
at the Old Dominion Cheese Factory, and the 
cows were averaging at the time of our visit 
about 25 pounds of milk each per day. 
The soil hero is similar to that heretofore 
described, being a rather still clay. Lime¬ 
stone crops out in several places on the farm, 
and in one place Mr. H. lias opened a quarry 
and lias a lime kiln from which the neigh¬ 
boring country is supplied for building and 
other purposes. 
Blue grass is indigenous ; but in seeding, 
timothy and clover are relied upon as the 
leading grasses, in wintering stock eorn 
fodder is largely used. Last year his whole 
slock of horned cattle was wintered on tin 
fodder from 25 acres of corn up Lo the 25th 
of March. Lie commenced feeding the last 
week in November and turned his dry eat tie 
to pasture outlie 1.0th of April, hut fed his 
oows in milk up to the 35th of that month. 
The usual practice is to stack corn fodder in 
the yard and use from the stacks as needed. 
LIMING THE UNO. 
Mr. llutuis says lime'is of great benefit to 
this soil. His practice is to apply it to sod 
ground at the rate of 40 bushels per acre 
from one to two years before plowing. 
SPRING HOUSE. 
There is an excellent spring house near the 
farm buildings, with u spring of cold, sweet 
water. It is arranged for sotting milk, but 
since the estalilishmentof the cheese factory 
the milk from his herd lias been carried to 
that establishment. Last year his net re¬ 
ceipts from 13 cows were 4500, besides sup¬ 
plying his family with milk and butter. 
LABOR. 
At this farm, as at others in the neighbor¬ 
hood, colored labor isemployed. Mr, I (irons 
says he has never had any trouble in getting 
good hands both for the house and the. field, 
and he thinks the difficulty which many 
experience with colored servants comes as 
much from the employer as the employed. 
Mr. Hughs pays at the rate of $1.50 per week 
for a colored woman who is a good and suf¬ 
ficient house servant; the colored girl of 15 
years gets50 cents per week. He has a col¬ 
ored man servant, a good hand, to whom he 
pays 4125 per year. Extra farm hands may 
be had for 4150 per year anil board. Where 
colored servants arc married and a house 
Is furnished, good hands may be had for $130 
per year and house rent. During the wheat 
harvest the men get $2 per day, and for the 
hay harvest $1 per day. 
MR. WALKER S FARM 
contains about 250 acres and is situated one- 
lialf mile from Watorfordand 3>£ miles from, 
Clark’s Gap. This is an excellent farm , under 
high cultivation, with nice buildings and neat 
surroundings, Mr. Walker has 50 acres in 
wheat, 20 acres in corn, 57 in meadow and 00 
in pasture. Fruit culture is made somewhat 
of a specialty, and Mr. Walker has, be¬ 
sides the old orchard, 12 acres recently set 
with peach trees. 
About 30 head of cattle and 7 horses are 
carried on the farm. The meadows yield at 
the rate of tons of hay to the acre, and 
Mr. Walker has made a practice of selling 
this crop, getting $17.50 per ton net at the 
railroad depot. Last year his peaches brought 
75 cents per bushel, and some years he bus sold 
peaches to the amount of $425 net in Wash¬ 
ington Market. The gross amount of sales 
from this farm average about $3,000 per year. 
JOSHUA SMITH'S FARM 
is in Jefferson Township, eight miles west of 
Leesburg, on the Washington and Winches¬ 
ter turnpike. The farm, like many others 
in the neighborhood, is undulating, so as to 
give good drainage. It. contains 214 acres ; 
30 acres in wheat, 30 in corn, 30 in meadow, 
and i .i in pasture. About 20 cows are kept 
on the place, 8 head of horses and a small 
flock of sheep. The meadows yield, on an 
average, 1! j tons to the acre. The system of 
farming is to plow up grass lands which are 
put to corn ; then follow two crops of wheat, 
when the laud is seeded down anil remains 
in grass three years. In seeding, a bushel of 
clover and one of timothy are used for every 
seven or eight acres. Last winter Mr. Smith 
commenced feuding stock in November, but 
the cattle were allowed to pick in the pas¬ 
ture until the middle of December, and in the 
spring milch cows were turned to pasture on 
the first of May. 
The principal feed of stock in winter is 
corn stalks ; but in spring a little hay is fed 
to cows in milk. Mr. SMITH believes in fod¬ 
der corn, and grows about two acres per 
year to feed t o cows iu the fall, when pas¬ 
tures begin to fall olY. 
Tn winter cows in milk get rations of corn 
meal and bran, mingled together in propor¬ 
tions of one-third corn to two-thirds bran, 
and each uniinul receives 12 quarts per day ; 
but dry stock do not get anything extra ex¬ 
cept, perhaps, a little soft corn. Last year 
Mr. B. milked 14 cows and sent to the factory 
34,000 pounds of milk during five months. 
The cows in milk at the time of our visit 
were yielding 80 pounds each per day. The 
buildings arc of brick, large and commo¬ 
dious, and were erected in 1815. The large 
brick barn escaped burning during the late 
war. 
Mr. Smith has a spacious and substantial 
spring house, and on the outside, where the 
water flows away in a considerable stream, 
a pool is constructed for the purpose of cool¬ 
ing the milk in the can previous to carting to 
the factory, The can is placed in the pool, 
and as fast as the milk is drawn it is strained 
directly in the can and thus, at the close of 
milking, is thoroughly cooled off. Mr, Smith 
has an ingenious arrangement of lever and 
tongs, whereby the can of'milk is raised 
from the pool to the wagon. Tt is a very 
simple and useful device, by which a heavy 
can may be loaded with all ease by a boy. 
$ Hainan. 
THE SUPPOSED GALLOWAY “ALLOY" IN 
THE SHORT-HORNS. 
We are, by inference, taken to task by an 
esteemed friend and an old breeder and im¬ 
porter of Short-Horns for allowing “ A 
Working Farmer,” in the Rural for Aug. I. 
p. 75, to .-ay that a “ polled animal was used 
iu founding the Hliort-IIorn breed, for this 
great noted Short-Horn breed was made up 
by considerable crossing at the commence¬ 
ment.” 
Wo are prone to allow so sensible and 
practical a writer as the. author of that arti¬ 
cle to have Ids own say, especially when he 
has some foundation in fact to base his opin¬ 
ions upon, as in this case. Still we. are glad 
to give the views of one so conversant with 
the history of the Short Horns as is the 
writer of the private letter alluded to. He 
proceedsAs I began his article and read 
along I thought, here is a man who knows 
what he is writing about! Then at the foot 
of the column l found this unwarranted ex¬ 
pression (above quoted).— The moment 
Berry’s second pamphlet Appeared, * History 
of Short-Homs,’—(copied by Yoiiutt), every 
good breeder in England scouted it as false. 
In his first edition Berry made no such asser¬ 
tion, lint before he published the second he 
became a breeder of the ‘ Alloy ’ blood, 
and wanted to write it up. This was the 
Galloway cross, winch Colling himself, who 
made it by a mere accident, laughed at and 
ridiculed.” 
“ It was because Bates kept hjs Duchess 
Tribe clear of this, and Stephenson Jus 
Princess Tribe that their descendants now 
command such high prices. Bellevidere, 
one of Bates’ great cards, and by which he 
restored his Duchess Tribe which had run 
down somewhat from too close breeding, 
before lie got him, was a Princess bull, brctl 
by Stephenson. Had not Stephenson in his 
old age lacked that clear judgment which 
previously characterized him, and bred too 
close, thus impairing the constitution and 
size of the Princess Tribe, they would be 
just as famous now as are the Dutchess, and 
bring as high prices. 
“ Booth got a small speck of the ‘Alloy ’ 
in his herd which greatly injured them ami 
kept him in the background for twenty years 
or more—although otherwise liis animals 
were large, strong constitutioned and good, 
though rather coarse. They lacked badly in 
handling until within the last fifteen years, 
since which they have been greatly improved 
by an outoroas from a better herd taken 
some twenty years or so ago.” 
Our Maryland correspondent cannot advo¬ 
cate too strongly the merits of polled cattle. 
They possess, as now bred, scarcely rivalled 
excellences anol adaptation to general useful 
purposes. The Red polled Norfolks of Lord 
Loudcs, for instance, rival the Ayrshire® for 
milk, the Devons for activity and docility in 
the yoke and for quality of beef, and the 
Short-Horns even for economy of ilesh 
production. Neither can he place too high 
an estimate upon the value of crosses well 
taken, and of grading up by always using 
pure bred mules, Nevertheless, our breeders 
have the experience of a century past to 
demonstrate that pure breeds must bo kept 
pure or they will be mined. 
---. 
FAILURE TO BEAR IN OOWS. 
Gan anything be done to bring into pro¬ 
ductiveness a cow which shows no inclina¬ 
tion? She should have calved on the 24th 
of April last. She has shown no disposition 
to t ake the bull since she was served in June 
1873. As T dried her off preparatory to calv¬ 
ing. she is a dead expense upon mv hands ; 
but as she is an extraordinary line cow giv¬ 
ing, when fresh, within a fraction of LB 
pounds of butl er per week, I am very unwil¬ 
ling to sell her to the butcher. 1 have vol¬ 
umes of the Rural and other agricultural 
papers for years back, but have examined 
them in vain for any help. What can be 
done ?—R.. Baltimore Co,, A Id. 
It is not an unusual thing for heifers, aft er 
having one calf, to “go over” one season 
without showing any inclination to have 
another. With the re turn of spring they are 
usually willing, and things go on as usual. 
This is easily accounted for. A heifer two 
years old, somewhat exhausted with her first 
call', is too much Occupied with recruiting 
her health and condition and with milk-giv¬ 
ing to attend to having any other calf during 
that season of the year when it, is most nat¬ 
ural for bovine animals to come in heat, 
namely, the early summer. 
Our corresdondeut “ It.’s” cow is probably 
of mature age, or she would not have given 
nearly 1(1 pounds of butter per week, and 
her ease is more obscure. She Is now, doubt¬ 
less, very fat, and that might be a hindrance, 
although it is less likely to be with cows than 
with some other animals. Were she our 
own, we would turn her into an upland 
brush pasture with young stock—one and 
two-year-old heifers She will here have a 
variety of food and abundant exercise to get 
it. Thu heifers will bo coming in heat now 
and then, and iu this there is a. sympathetic 
contagion, and she should be watched to de¬ 
tect any positive symptom of the same. 
Some cows make very little demonstration, 
while others are almost crazy. As soon as 
she appears to be in heat she should be sent 
to and left with the bull for some time. 
-■*■-*-■*- 
NOTES FOR HERDSMEN. 
Abortion in Cows proceeds from heredi¬ 
tary causes as well as others, as weakness in 
the womb, &c., will follow, for I know one 
striking instance of its going to the third 
generation. A farmer who had a desire to 
improve his herd, hut did not like to give a 
great price for a bull, bought a bull calf at a 
few weeks old from a valuable l horoughbred 
herd of Short-Homs, get ting it at half price 
because it was small and had come before 
its proper time. His cows were great, 
strong, Yorkshire-bred ones and never had 
any miscarriages, and never hud any by this 
bull, which sired many very lino heifers ; 
but when they came to breed there were 
several which calved prematurely, and con¬ 
tinued to do so year after year. Conse¬ 
quently there can ba no doubt but the 
weakness or malformation, or whatever 
produced the abortion in the bull’s mother, 
was inherited by the heifers from the gran- 
dam. Dairymen in England hover put a 
cow to the bull again that has ou.ee calved 
prematurely.—A. w. p. 
Jlcikviny Choked Cattle .—A correspond¬ 
ent of the London (Out.| Farmer’s Advocate 
says he makes the suffering animal jump 
over a pair of burs left up as high aa the 
animal can lie made to jump when com¬ 
pelled by the liberal use of a whip. He 
never fails to relieve a case of choking by 
this means. Occasionally he makes them 
jump over the bars twice; but once is 
usually sufficient. A Western man relieves 
his choked cattle by simply taking up a hind 
foot and hitting a few smart blows with a 
hammer or stick, or whatever conies handy. 
Objection to Jersey Cotas.- A recent writer 
objects to them because “their milk is too 
poor after skimming to make good feed for 
pigs !” Is not that a good reason for profer- 
iug them—being evidence that all the Cream 
in the milk readily rises. Besides it will di¬ 
minish the number of pigs, trichina-infested, 
put up on the market: also prevent hog 
cholera. Tt seems to us a goou reason for 
liking Jerseys ! 
