266 
MOORE’S RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
APRIL 24 
obtaining food. In soiling the cows they are 
relieved from this exercise, and hence a cer¬ 
tain amount of exercise under this system, 
it would seem, could be turned to useful 
labor without detriment. 
The working of bulls has been often advo¬ 
cated, and we believe when tests have been 
made no injury has resulted to the animals ; 
but, on the other hand, their usefulness a9 
breeders has been improved. Hulls, how¬ 
ever, are vicious and disagreeable animals to 
handle, while cows are certainly more gentle 
and tractable. The idea of working cows on 
small dairy farms is novel to most of our 
dairymen, and wo are glad the experiment 
is to be made, as possibly some good may 
cotne of it.. 
We do not see how a farmer on even so 
small a farm as ten acres can do entirely 
without a horse. The horse would be needed 
for marketing, for doing various kinds of 
work requiring expedition, to say nothing of 
administering to the comforts of the various 
members of the family. But if cows can be 
utilized iu the way proposed, one might be 
made to answer the purpose on a small farm, 
and thus the cost and keeping of one horse 
be saved, which of course would be some¬ 
thing of an Item to be added to the annual 
receipts. 
-—»♦»- 
THE MOC-MOCO PLANT FOE THE PRE¬ 
SERVATION OF RUTTER. 
Bruce, in his “Travels In Abyssinia,” re¬ 
fers to the wonderful preservative qualities 
of the root of a certain herb called the Moc- 
moco, when small quantities are mingled 
with fresh butter, He says the Agows, in 
whose country the Nile rises, are in point of 
numbers one of the moat considerable na¬ 
tions of Abyssinia. Their riches, however, 
are still greater than their power, for Gou- 
dar and all the neighboring country depend 
for the necessaries of life, such as honey, 
butter, wheat, hides and wax, upon the 
Agows, who come constantly in succession, 
a thousand and fifteen hundred at a time, 
loaded with these commodities, to the capi¬ 
tal. It may be naturally supposed that in a 
long carriage, such as that of 100 miles, in 
such a climate, butter would melt and bo in 
a state of fusion,, consequently very near 
putrefaction. This is prevented by the use 
of the root of the herb above-named, which 
is yellow iu color, and in shape nearly re¬ 
sembles a carrot. This they bruise and mix 
with their butter, and a veiy small quantity 
preserves it fresh for a considerable time ; 
and this is a great saving and convenience, 
for supposing salt was employed, it is very 
doubtful if it would answer the intention ; 
besides, salt is a money in this country, being 
circulated in the form of wedges or bricks ; 
it serves the purpose of silver coin and iu 
the change of gold. This herb, therefore, is 
of the utmost importance in preventing the 
increase in price of butter, which is the prin¬ 
cipal or leading article of food of all ranks 
of people m this country. Thus it would 
seem that butler-makers rnay learn some¬ 
thing in regard to the preservation of but¬ 
ter even from barbarous people ; and con¬ 
sidering the vast quantity of butter that is 
spoiled before it reaches the consumer, Mat¬ 
in oeo might be useful here. 
-♦-*--*-■ 
WATERING MILK TO GET THE CREAM. 
It is well knowu that milk set in the usual 
way, although it throws up a goodly per¬ 
centage of cream, does not yield up ail the 
fat in the milk, because the skimmed milk, 
ou being subjected to analysis, is found to 
contain a small percentage of butter, not¬ 
withstanding it had on being set thrown up 
the cream very perfectly. Experiments that 
have been made in adding water to milk to 
facilitate the rising of the cream have shown 
that more cream is obtained. Thus a speci¬ 
men of milk was dividod into two portions. 
One portion was set. for cream, and iu seven 
hours yielded 7 per cent, of cream. The 
other portion was mixed with an equal vol¬ 
ume of water and the diluted milk set for 
cream. The diluted milk in seven hours 
gave 5 percent, of cream, or l 1 per cent, 
more cream than it should have yielded if 
watering made no difference. It may not 
be advisable, however, to use the water in 
this way on all occasions for getting up the 
cream, since water added to milk hastens 
the acidity of the liquid, which iu warm 
weather should be guarded against. 
PRIZE ESSAYS ON BUTTER-MAKING. 
The Committee appointed by the National 
Butter and Egg Association to award prizes 
on butter-making, offered last year by Mr. 
Dake of Wisconsin, announced the awards I 
at the recent Convention of the Association 
at Chicago, as follows :—On Butter-making, 
C. O. Taylor, Galesburg, $300; Buckeye But- 
ter-makor, box No. 1,252 Ann Arbor, Mich., 
$300 ; System and Science in Butter-making, 
N. B. Derrick, $150; The Art of Butter¬ 
making, Walter S. Hunt, St. Atheus, Me., 
$100: Tito Manufacture and Handling of 
Butter, W. I.. Hermace, No. 77 Broad street, 
New York, $75 ; Butter-making, 8. E. Lewis, 
Oxford, N. Y,, $50; Butter-making, W. J. 
Mills, Madison, Wls., $35 ; Butter-making, 
Mrs Lyman Wilmot, Deerfield, III., $25; 
Butter, Frank A. Power, Perrysburg, N. Y., 
$20 ; How to Make Good Butter, E. T. Cut¬ 
ler, Warren, Mass., $2.5; Butter making, 
Mrs. tV. F. Bedell, Oxford, Wis., *25. The 
report was adopted. 
The officers of the National Butler and 
Egg Association for the ensuing year are as 
followsPresident, Geo. E. Gooch of Chi¬ 
cago, III.; Treasurer, E. L Kemp of Balti¬ 
more, Md., Secretary, It. M. Tattle of Daven¬ 
port, Iowa. 
FEEDING MILCH COWS. 
In the Rural New- Yorker of March 27, 
under the "Notes for Herdsmen,” I see 
Deacon Bi ki m is reported to have suid that 
iu his neighborhood there were men that 
bought new milch cows and fatted them 
while milking and did it on three-quarts of 
meal and three of shorts per day. Likewise 
a Mr. Gougin' who feeds steumed food and 
gives five pounds of shorts, t ;vo of meal and 
ten of hay. The daily expense of keeping 
his cows is IS cents. Now, If these state¬ 
ment* are true and cows can be kept in a 
good flow of milk on the quantity of feed 
they have stated, then Orange County milk 
men either don’t know how to feed cows, or 
if they do keep them at as small an expense 
as these gentlemen claim, they should not 
eompluiui when they get only four cents foi 
tbeir milk in wiuter. If a row can be kept 
for 18 cents a day, it is not true that they 
cannot afford to sell milk for four cents, 
1 have been in the milk business for five 
years, and the past winter have fed in the 
neighborhood of thirty cows. The daily ex- 
peusi for feed has been about 16 cents. In 
the morning they have had four quarts of 
corn meal and wheat bran, mixed dr}'; after 
watering, about a bushel of cut stalks wet 
with hot water, and four quarts of rye bran 
aud sho Is ; and at night four quarts of clear 
Cot) meal, i don't know the amount of hay 
given, but am positive that they have eaten 
more than ten pounds. I am not Ashamed 
to have any one look tit my cows, but they 
are not all fit for beef, and I must confes* 
tliat my cows won’t do well on less than I 
am giving. Dairyman. 
Walden, Orange Co., N. V. 
--♦♦♦■-■ 
HOW BUTTER IS SOMETIMES TAINTED. 
Winter anil Spring butter is often very 
much Injured In flavor by allowing cows to 
cat. the litter from horse stables. Cows are 
not unfreqnently very fond of this Jitter, 
though it is impregnated with liquid manure 
from the horses, and if allowed, they eat it 
greedily ; and the effect is that their milk 
and butter will be tainted with the taste of 
this kind of lood. iu the same way that the 
flavor is injured by eating turnips, but to a 
more disagreeable degree. If litter is al¬ 
lowed to be eaten, it should be only given to 
cattle not in milk, and on no account should 
milch cows be allowed to consume other 
than the sweetest and purest food. Very 
nice butter-makers are sometimes at a loss 
to account for stable taints iu butter, espe¬ 
cially when extraordinary precautions have 
been taken to have the milking done in the 
most perfect manner, ami so on iu all the 
processes of handling the milk until the but¬ 
ter is packed for market. Still, the butter 
has a disagreeable taint, and the cause often 
comes from allowing the cows, wheu turned 
out to water atnl exercise, to feed about the 
horse stable, where they consume all the 
litter which, ou account of its being souked 
with liquid manure, is cast out of the stable. 
--♦♦♦- 
BUTTER FACTORY AVERAGES. 
At the Berry Butter Factory, Malone, N. 
Y., the average quantity of milk for 1 lb. of 
butter during 1874 was 25 1-10 lbs. The ave¬ 
rage price received for the butter was 
36 21-100c., and the whole number of pounds I 
made was 37,331. The net to patrons per 
100 lbs. of milk w.\ 1,26, 
The M. A. Kassel; !utter Factory in Rod- 
mnu. Jefferson Co., i.. Y., did a little better 
than the Berry. The average was 23 66*100 
lbs. of milk for a pound of nutter, and al¬ 
though t he butter brought only 35 43-100c. 
per lb., the uet receipts to patrons on 100 lbs. 
of milk were $1.45>£. The whole number of 
pounds of butter made was 20,148. Best 
average money per cow in a single dairy of 
25 cows was $56.31. 
<jj|ield d^ops. 
GERMAN MILLET IN THE SOUTH. 
A Southern* correspondent asks the Ru¬ 
ral New-Yorker “How best to sow Ger¬ 
man Millet for bay or seed ’—whether on 
river bottoms subject to spring overflow i 
Does it like lime, like wheat, or not.'” This 
Millet is an annual, ami may be sown like 
wheat or oats on clean land. There is no 
objection to sowing it on river bottoms 
after the spring overflow. If designed for 
hay, it should be cut when in bloom ami be¬ 
fore the seed matures, or even develops. 
The following experience with it is from the 
pen of a Tennessee planter, and we clip it 
from the Rural Sun for our correspondent's 
benefit ; 
“For the benefit of those farmers who 
have had no experience with the German 
Millet, I propose to give my experience for 
the last five years with its culture and its 
merits as a paying crop, and as food for 
stock. First, this excellent grass will grow 
on thin and worn fields better than any crop 
I have any knowledge of. Say on poor 
fields, if well pulverized before the seeds are 
put in, will make one ton of good hay per 
acre, and iu proportion to the fertility of 
the land will produce up to three tons per 
acre, and can be seeded iu the latitude of 
Nashville, Tenn., as early as the 15th of 
April, and the plant will stand as much 
frost as the corn plant, nml if seeded down 
as early as the 15th of April, you will have 
good, well-matured hay from it by the 1st 
of June, or say in 45 or 50 days from seed¬ 
ing. You can make two crops from the 
same plat of land the same season of this 
excellent, hay. 1 should have stated that if 
seeded in the month of April be sure to put 
on upland, and on bottom land later in the 
season. Would it not be well, now that all 
farmers are scarce of provender, to cany 
their stock through the winter, to sow a 
small amount of this Millet early, to meet 
the. demand for hay '( The writer of this, 
with five years’ experience, knows of not an 
objection to it. as food for cattle, horses, 
sheep, hogs and fowls ; all eat it eagerly and 
thrive well from its nutritious quality. For 
horses and cattle 1 cut the hay with a ma¬ 
chine just as other straw Is cut. The liner J 
or shorter the cutting, the better it is. By 
this process you can save one-half the hay 
from waste, and this is quite an item in 
times like the present; where such a great 
scarcity exists ; and as a paying crop, I have 
no knowledge of its equal, either to market 
the seed or hay. 1 have never, with all my 
experience with this crop, made a failure ; 
sowed last season iu the unprecedented 
drouth, in which a lair crop was the result, 
upon thin upland, and never have I been 
forced to sell any up to this day at less than 
$18 per ton ; nor have I sold the seed at less 
than $2 per bushel, and often at a much ] 
higher figure, both for the hay and the seed. 
-- 
A POTATO THAT RESISTS THE COLO¬ 
RADO BEETLE. 
A. Jackson of Frederick Co., Md., com¬ 
municates the following interesting facts to [ 
tlie Baltimore American Farmer, which lie 
says cun be attested by the sworn testimony 
of two of his laborers :—About five years ago 
he received from New Jersey a peculiar 
kind of a red potato, under the name of Si¬ 
berian Red. It proved to be a very prolific 
bearer, and of a monstrous size, very mealy 
and wholesome for the table, though some 
purple streaks would occasionally ran 
through the tubers, hast summer ho plant¬ 
ed them iu hills four feet apart, between 
young grape vines which stood eight feet by 
eight feet, and raised on one acre a little bet¬ 
ter than one hundred bushels of magnificent 
potatoes. He fertilized the hills by mixing 
lime with ten pier cent, of salt, and mixing 
old cow manure with about ten per cent, of 
said lime and salt, compound. He used a 
good shovelful of it in every liill, and em¬ 
bodied it with the ground (clay soil) by dig¬ 
ging. The result, he saj’s, was astonishing, 
tY hen the potato bugs (which had then 
appeared in myriads) had eaten off a vine, 
presently two or more vines would shoot, up, 
keeping on growing until the November 
frosts killed them. Most curious of all, they 
bore here and there small potatoes (uot seed 
bulls! on the vines. One remarkable hill 
yielded forty -five average sized potatoes. 
All his other kinds, us Early Rose, Peach- 
blow, Eary Goodrich, tin ugh treated iu the 
same manner, were an utter failure. 
Orchard Grass—J. R. Griffin. —We know 
of no reason why orchard grass seed sown as 
you propose should not catch it the season is 
favorable. Roll the ground after sowing. 
ABOUT NEW POTATOES. 
| I have been waiting until the winter 
months to test the eating qualities of several 
new and much-talked-ot varieties of pota¬ 
toes, with which I experimented last sum¬ 
mer. I had the Early Nonsuch, Compton's 
Surprise, Brownell's Beauty anil the Early 
Vermont. The Vermont, was ripe and eat¬ 
able u week certainly before the Early 
Rose ; the Nonsuch is not so early by several 
weeks ; it was not equal in quality, even in 
earl}* autumn, to the Rose and Vermont, 
although now, Dec. 25, I find it much im¬ 
proved. It also suffered more from the rot 
than the others. The Surprise is truly a 
very excellent potato — not of remarkable 
productiveness, but very respectable in that 
direction. Brownell’s Beauty is a magnifi¬ 
cent tuber, but it suffered, very slightly, 
from rot. I was not pleased wit-b its eating 
qualities in the fall, but now find it excel¬ 
lent,. I cannot consider the Vermont and 
Rose as identical, which several writers have 
lately proclaimed them to be. 1 planted 
j them side by side, with the same manure, 
on the same day, and the Vermont took the 
lead from the first ; its tops were dead a 
week, at the least, before those of the Rose. 
; I recommend all the above sorts as worthy 
of further trial. p. 
Brockton, Mass., Dec. 26,1874. 
This letter suddenly appears among the 
manuscript of the Editoi’, April 13 ; where 
it lias been meantime we cannot say ; but it 
is not too late to print it. 
FIELD NOTES. 
— 
Ho a in it Done t—I would like to have 
j some one who has grown from 8(X) to 1,000 
pounds of potatoes from one pound of seed, 
“with ordinary farm cultivation,” tell the 
readers of the Rural how it is done. I 
think they can have no objection to telling 
us how they do it, if they do it fairly and 
“ with ordinary farm cultivation.” For my 
j part 1 do not believe it was ever done with 
] one or two or three potatoes thut weighed 
one pound, planted and grown “ with ordin¬ 
ary farm cultivation ;” for that was ex¬ 
pressly stated as the condition oh which any 
one could compete for premiums. 1 do not 
suppose any one will let us know the secret; 
but hope they will, and oblige one Who does 
not care to try for premiums. —a. s. n. 
Extra Early Vermont Potato. — Last 
spring I planted half a peck of the above- 
named potato ; bugs damaged them consid¬ 
erably, as 1 had not time to pick and destroy 
them, consequently the yield was small. I 
consider the potato far ahead of Early Rose 
in quality, and I think any person being un¬ 
able to distinguish a difference in appearance 
could easily select the Early Vermont by 
using his palate as a judge, I have kept 
them in the cellar this winter, and a few 
were frozen ; but those that escaped the 
frost are us firm and fresh as the day they 
were dug, and not. a decayed one to be found. 
—J. M. Sherk, Sherkston, (hit. 
Rotation of Crops in the. South.— An 
Alabama correspondent asks “if there is 
any particular system of rotation of crops 
adapted to the South, and if so, where can l 
be informed as to particulars ?” We do not 
happen to know of any Southern planter 
that has adopted a system of rotation that 
include* a variety of crops succeeding eacli 
other iu regular rotation for a succession of 
yearn. If any such have been made and re¬ 
corded, we do cot know where to find the 
record. Perhaps some of our readers do 
and will enlighten our correspondent. 
Wheat Properly vn. Improperly Planted. 
—I would like information on a piece of 
wheat that I sowed wheu I first commenced 
farming in Wayne County, N. Y. I com¬ 
menced sowing in the morning ; at noon I 
htid about two acres sowed ahead of the 
harrow ; then came a drenching rain so that 
I could not go on to the piece for a day or 
two and then it was very wet. That which 
was harrowed before the rain was nice, 
clean wheat, while of t hat t hat was harrowed 
in the mud, nearly one-fourth was smut.— 
Hop Hodges. 
Wheat and Chess. — When Hop Hodges 
will tell us how the thousands of plants, 
weeds, &c., grow in fields where the farmer 
has not sown them, then we will tell him 
how chess comes in the soil where it has 
never (thut auy one knows of) been sown. 
If he will toil us why Beech, Maple, Irou- 
wood, and a hundred other spei u * of plants 
spring up where nothing but Piue ever grew 
before, after the Pine i-. cleared off. we may 
perhaps help him with his conundrum. 
When to Sow Grasses in North Alabama. 
—A. C. P.—Without having had experience 
there, we should say in February or March 
would be the be9t time to sow grasses with 
you. 
} 
