DEC. 4$ 
830 
THE 
fSEW-YOBKER. 
lost its leg by accident, was provided with a 
wooden one on which it moves about with 
ease, is again reappearing. That heifer ought 
to be an old cow now. But the moral will al¬ 
ways be good for use, which is, do not destroy 
any animal that may break a limb, nor too 
hastily remove a broken limb, even to fit on a 
wooden one, for by means of plaster-of-Paris 
and some bagging strips, the limb may be set 
and supported until the fractured bone unites 
again. The strips are dipped in the moistened 
plaster, made into a thin paste; wrapped 
around the prepared limb above and below the 
fracture, uutil a stiff bandage is made, which, 
as it sets very rapidly, holds the limb so that 
it cannot be moved. 
Which reminds me that, having a careless 
man, who would never let the bars down when 
driving sheep and cattle out of a field, I had 
at one time a calf and several Bheep with 
broken legs. Every one was repaired in this 
manner, the strips of bagging being wound 
about the limb, plastered over with calcined 
plaster mixed to a thin paste, and other strips 
wound over that and more plaster applied ; 
the leg was fastened to splints of wood until 
the plaster set. The animal would limp about 
for a few days on three legs, but all recovered 
without a tlemish. .Let us make a note here, 
that when bars are used, they should all be 
let down and moved on one side before ani¬ 
mals, especially sheep, are driven ont of a 
field. 
ilainj ^ESimutirj}. 
THE DAISY COW-NO. 19. 
HENRY STEWART. 
Trouble in Churning. j 
The principal complaints of the behavior of 
the cream in the churn are, difficulty of pro¬ 
curing the butter; foaming of the cream, and 
white specks in the butter; soft, white butter ; 
and waste of cream in the buttermilk. These 
troubles may all arise from improper feeding 
of the cow ; from too long keeping of the 
cream ; from keeping the cream at too low a 
temperature ; from churning at too low a tem¬ 
perature ; aud from the condition of the cow. 
1 will consider them ODe by one, as these are 
very frequent causes of complaint, especially 
by inexperienced dairymen and in family 
dairies. 
When the Butter will not Come 
the dairy woman may work for hours and all 
her labor may be spent in vain, unless she is 
told to raise the temperature of the cream by 
throwing Into the churn a quantity of hot 
water. On one occasion I was churning a lot 
of cream which was fuil of small butter, but 
the butter would not gather ; the cream was 
smooth and somewhat stiff. To test the case 
I continued to churn for seven hours, and still 
the cream was unchanged. The temperature 
was 62®. A few quarts of hot water, suffi- 
cient to raise the temperature to 65®, were 
turned in. and in two minutes the butter 
gathered, but it was white and of bad flavor. 
Over-churning had added six months to its 
age, for the excessive exposure to the air in 
the long churning bad been equivalent to 
several months’ keeping in the pail and had 
utterly spoiled the quality. But the low tem¬ 
perature was not the real cause of the trouble, 
tor the next churning, noted exactly because 
it was made in a new churn, was at a temper¬ 
ature of 62®, and the butter came in 11 min¬ 
utes. The next churning was at 65® and 
butter came in eight minutes. So that it could 
not have been the temperature at which the 
cream was churned ; but—as it wason January 
3rd, and the weather had been very cold, the 
cream cellar having been down to 40 o for 
several days—it was the low temperature 
at which the cream had been kept that 
caused the difficulty. Cream that is kept at 
a temperature of at least 55® to 60®, and 
not more than six days, may always be 
churned in 30 minuteB at a temperature of 
62 ® to 65 o, if the churn is a good one, and in 
the best churns butter will come in from 10 to 
20 minutes. 
Foaming of Cream in ttie Churn, 
may be due to too low a teniperature or too 
long keeping; slow, delayed churning is often 
accompanied by foaming. As soon as the 
churning begins, air is rapidly intermingled 
with the cream and innumerable vesicles are 
formed, each containing air. This expands 
the cream (as in whipped cream for cooking), 
and is really foaming; but under proper cir¬ 
cumstances this foaming subsides as rapidly, 
and the noiseless motion of the churn quickly 
changes to a “ slap-dash ” sound, which pre¬ 
cedes the more sharply liquid sound of the 
coming butter. If the cream is too cold for 
the particles of butter to unite, the emulsion 
(foaming) continues until the remedy—an in¬ 
crease of temperature by addition of hot water 
—is applied. But this emulsion may be formed 
in another way, and is often thus formed in 
the Summer, by too long standing of the cream 
on the milk, or too long keeping of the cream 
before it is churned. The cause of it is the for¬ 
mation of alcohol in the milk by the decompo¬ 
sition of the milk sugar, and the combination 
of the alcohol with the fat and the formation 
of an emulsion. When this happens no amount 
of churning will bring the butter. It may be 
expected when, on skimming the cream from 
the milk, a layer of whey-like or watery liquid 
iB eeeu to have been formed between the milk 
and the cream, and the milk is thick and lop- 
pered under it. To prevent the trouble, half 
a teaspoonfni of baking soda or saleratus may 
be stirred in the cream pot when the cream has 
been poured into It; and this should always be 
done, when this has occurred, at least one day 
before the cream is churned. 
. White Speck* In the Butter 
are the result of a too rapid souring of the 
milk or of keeping the cream in too warm a 
place and not 6tirring it every day when fresh 
cream is added to it. When fresh cream, with 
milk mixed with it, comes in contact with the 
sour cream, this milk is immediately curdled 
aud the small flakes of enrd become inclosed 
in masses of cream, When the cream is churn¬ 
ed these hardened flakes of card become mixed 
with the grannies of butter and cannot be sepa¬ 
rated from them by washing. Coloring will 
not disguise this fault, for the card will not 
take the color as the cream will; the coloring 
is prepared either with potash or oil and either 
of these easily unite with the butter, while they 
will not mix with curd. The only eure for 
this defect is prevention, by care in managing 
the cream. 
Soft, White Butter 
4 
is caused by uneven temperature in the dairy 
and by the freezing of the cream or the milk, aB 
well as by the food given to the cows. Some 
kinds of food will spoil the best cows as re¬ 
gards the quality of the butter, for the time 
being, and these should be discarded from the 
dairy. Potatoes, fed raw, have this effect, 
with the addition of a disagreeable flavor; and 
buckwheat bran or meal has a very distinct 
effect in this way. A week’s feeding of buck¬ 
wheat bran will produce butter of the texture 
and color of lard. But just here It is a ques¬ 
tion of management of the cream rather than 
of feeding that Is to be considered. It is of im¬ 
portance that everything about a dairy should 
be regular and unchangeable. And in the 
care of the dairy, temperature is one of the 
essential conditions. If this is neglected and 
the cream is permitted to freeze, the butter 
wilt be white and soft. The color may be 
made right by the addition of coloring, but 
the Boft texture will remain and the butter will 
lose its proper waxiness and become greasy, 
and this is beyond remedy. The cause must 
be prevented by providing some means of 
warming the dairy to keep the temperature 
even. 
Wnsie of Cream 
in the buttermilk is the effect of too long keep¬ 
ing, and not stirring the cream to secure even¬ 
ness of condition. When the cream is turned 
out into the churn, jf the bottom is watery and 
has a peculiar sweet and whey-like smell, 
that part of the cream will foam aud form an 
emulsion, and will not mingle with the butter. 
When the butter is removed from the churn, 
this remains in the buttermilk, and after 
standing some time will appear as an oily sub- 
6tauce on the buttermilk. Some persons have 
supposed that the mixing of different cows’ 
milks, or the creams from the milks, produces 
such a waste as this, because when one por¬ 
tion of the cream ib churned another is not. 
I have carefully investigated this point for 
some years, but have never found any evidence 
tending to support it until the recent publica¬ 
tion of some experience by a person who stated 
that he had churned the cream of several cows 
separately, aud then mixed, aud the result was 
a very marked loss iu the mixed cream. The loss 
was so enormous that some error might be 
suspected, aud at any rate I have never found 
anything to support this statement. On the 
contrary, I have found many times that the 
cream of a cow, which by itself required 30 
minutes to churn, was made into butter in 12 
minutes when churned with that of another 
cow whose cream always churned rapidly. A 
great many trials of cows by churning their 
cream separately and then with that of others, 
never yet showed any loss. This result is 
reasonable; for when we consider how butter 
is gathered in the churn and one particle col¬ 
lects with Itself other particles until fragments 
of butter are formed, and these gather into 
lumps by their natural cohesiveness, it is im¬ 
possible to believe that the butter of one cow 
can remain in the ehurn by itself without mix¬ 
ing with the rest, or that if it did, it would not 
leave such very apparent traces of itself in the 
buttermilk that it could not be lost. If any 
cream is lost it cannot be lost in this way with¬ 
out palpable evidence ; but it is lost frequently 
by mismanaging the cream in the way pre¬ 
viously indicated. The cream is then found 
floating on the buttermilk, but it is not in such 
a condition that it can be made into butter. 
${jx Iffftsxmatt. 
“PERCHERON HORSES TRIED AND 
FOUND WANTING.” 
Thus writes one of your correspondents in 
the Rural of Dec., 4. But were these horses 
he thu6 speaks of real Percherons or ouly such 
as are falsely called so. Within the past 10 
years, many horses have been imported from 
France, and called Percherons and Normans 
which were neither one nor the other. They 
were Boulonnais, a much coarser, slower 
and heavier French horse than the true 
Percheron. Others also have been imported, 
and perhaps been registered in the Per- 
cheron-Norman Stud Book, published in Chi¬ 
cago, which were colts picked up after wean¬ 
ing in Belgium and Flanders, brought to La 
Perche and Normandy, kept there till nearly 
or fully grown and then sold as uue Percher¬ 
ons and Normans. 
A true Percheron is superior to even a Nor¬ 
man. He ranges generally from 15 to 16 hands 
high, and weighs from 1,300 to 1,600 pounds. 
He is very compactly formed, with a fine 
Arabian-like head ; arched neck; broad, strong, 
flat, sinewy legs; and the toughest and best of 
hoofB, well set up at the heels. His hair is 
soft and fine, and seldom long or shaggy on 
the legs. His action is free and easy, with a 
natural walk of about four miles per hour, and 
a trot of fully six miles, which can be easily 
pushed up when required to considerably 
greater speed. He is very docile, hardy, and 
of indomitable pluck. 
If one wishes to have a good idea of a true 
Percheron, let him look at a fine well-bred 
Canadian pony, and imagine him grown to 
the 6ize of a Percheron. French gentlemen 
frequently use these horses to their carriages, 
and handsome, noble, serviceable teams they 
make. I have often seen them thus harnessed 
in France, and occasionally n6ed also as saddle 
horses, although not nearly so suitable for the 
latter as for the former purpose. 
The Clydesdales are good farm horses, but 
not nearly so fine and active as true Per¬ 
cherons. As for Russian horses, I have seen 
thousands of these ; some are quite good, but 
no better than our own Americans. 
Western. 
Jfarm (frxonomg. 
COOKING. CUTTING AND GRINDING 
FODDER-COB MEAL. 
E. i?.. Way, Kansas , says: “As coarse food 
for stock, what the Western farmer calls 
• roughness,’ is rapidly advancing in price, we 
need the experience of our best feeders, East 
and West, on the question whether the returns 
will warrant farmers in preparing food for 
horses, cattle, and hogs, by cutting, grinding, 
or cooking ? An exhaustive discussion- of this 
question, with reference to ail kinds of feed 
and stock, giving figures, would be of great 
value, especially to your Western readers. It 
is stated, on what seems to be a scientific au¬ 
thority, that corn cobs have a nutritive quality, 
fully equal to the best Btraw. On the other 
hand, some farmers state that they are inju¬ 
rious when ground and fed to stock. Can we 
not get at the facts on both sides of this ques¬ 
tion also ?" 
ANSWER BY PROFESSOR G. 0. CALDWELL. 
Cooking Fodder. 
The kitchen with its cooking arrangements, 
however rude they may BOrnetimes be, consti¬ 
tutes the most essential part of the home 
that man constructs for himself; any other 
part of bis habitation can be dispensed with, 
but not the kitchen. There the food provided 
for him by nature, iu being softened and dis¬ 
integrated by the cooking that it undergoes, is 
so modified as to be more easily masticated and 
prepared for the attack of the digestive fluidB; 
in being made more palatable, it excites a 
larger secretion of some of those fluids, and in 
that way also the digestive work may be favor¬ 
ed. The cooking produces no chemical changes 
of any consequence. Noth')ug more than this 
can be expected in cooking food for animals ; 
and if the animal is provided with organs for 
suitably masticatiog its natural food and is not 
prevented in any way from doing the work of 
mastication in a proper manner, and does not 
require that its appetite shall be stimulated by 
tempting viands, it may be inferred that cook¬ 
ing fodder Is a superfluous operation. 
The most recent careful digestion experi¬ 
ments with cooked fodder, by Hornberger aud 
others, show that, in accordance with these de¬ 
ductions, the fodder is not made more digesti¬ 
ble by this treatment. In these tests the cooking 
was thorough, as the fodder was steamed for 
an hour, under a little more than the atmos¬ 
pheric pressure, aud was allowed to cool in the 
cylinder; when taken out in the morning, if 
any water remained unabsorbed it was poured 
over the hay when fed, so that no soluble food 
should be lost in this extract. The steamed 
bay was at first readily eaten by the two oxen 
to which it was fed, but not so readily after a 
time. Besides the ration of steamed hay alone, 
the same oxen were fed for another period on 
the same kind of bay as dry fodder, and for 
still another period on a ration of the hay sim¬ 
ply thoroughly wetted with warm water; sam¬ 
ples of the fodder were analyzed, and the excre¬ 
ments were carefully collected, weighed and 
analyzed by samples, There was no notable 
difference in the digestion of the constituents 
of the fodder in the three cases, except as to 
the important protein or albuminoids, of 
which both oxen digested less in the steamed 
fodder than in either the dry or the welted fod¬ 
der, as shown in the following table, where the 
protein digested is given in per cent, of the 
protein in the ration: 
Dry Steamed Wetted 
fod'r. fodder, fodder. 
First OX... 44.27 29.77 35.U7 
Second ox... 43.93 30 50 43.54 
The experiment is 6eeu to be highly satisfac¬ 
tory in respect to the close agreement in the 
digestive effect of the two oxen in the first two 
periods, both falling off to about the same ex¬ 
tent on the steamed fodder, and in the agree¬ 
ment in respect to the digestive action of one 
of the oxen on dry and on wetted fodder. The 
other ox did not appear to be in good condi¬ 
tion during the third period, as he did not eat 
well; but, nevertheless, he did not fail to 
digest the protein of the wetted fodder better 
than in the steamed iodder. Of course an ex¬ 
periment with but two oxen, however closely 
the results may correspond, does not settle the 
question, even though there is good reason for 
believing that the only effect of cooking on the 
protein, if there is any change at all, would be 
to make it less soluble, and less easily as¬ 
similable. 
In an earlier investigation by Hellriegel, in 
1864, it appeared from the average results with 
two sheep fed on rye straw thoroughly wetted 
with boiling water, and therefore only slighrly 
cooked, that the digestibility of the protein 
was increased by about four per cent.; but as 
the alteration in the fodder by such treatment 
must have been very insignificant, aud one of 
the animals digested the protein no better than 
in dry straw of the same quality, while the 
other digested it apparently very much more 
completely, the results possess no great im¬ 
portance in reference to the question under 
discussion. Emil Wolff, than whom no one 
oau be more implicitly trusted, affirms in his 
writings on stock feeding, that cooking does 
not increase the digestibility of the fodder, 
and this conclusion, stated before the appear¬ 
ance of these last investigations, is amply con¬ 
firmed by their results. 
If we refer to the results of practical trials, 
where it has been attempted to compare the 
productive capacity of cooked and uncooked 
fodder for milk, beef, wool or pork, we find 
conflicting testimony, from which we can 
safely draw this conclusion ouly, that no 
advantage is gained in cooking any fodder 
that is good in quality, and iu its natnral con¬ 
dition is readily eaten. If, as appears above, 
cooking does not serve to expose the constitu¬ 
ents of the fodder more fully to the attack of 
the digestive fluid agents, this is a reasonable 
conclusion, and science and piactice agree. 
Some experiments, to all appearances care¬ 
fully performed, Beem to give proof of con¬ 
siderably greater productive power for fodder 
of good quality, when steamed or cooked, than 
when fed raw; but for every such result its 
opposite can be produced from the records in 
the agricultural journals, as auy oue can learn 
for himself who will take the trouble to 
examine Ibe files of these; it would take too 
much space here to give the evidence in detail. 
An ordinary farm supplies a great variety of 
foddering material, some of which is readily 
eaten by cattle, while other kinds will be re¬ 
fused if there is hope of getting something 
more agreeable to their taste or instincts. This 
poor fodder contains a large quantity of the 
same digestible nutrients that are to be found 
iu good fodder, aud which are fully as produc¬ 
tive of milk or beef when once digested. The 
better and more concentrated the kind of fod¬ 
der, the larger the proportion of each of its 
nutrients digested. In linseed cake 80 per 
cent, of the protein, 90 per cent of the fat and 
80 per cent of the non-nitrogeuous extract are 
digested. For good hay the corresponding 
figures are 78, 64 aud 78 percent.; for wheat 
straw, 26, 27 and 40 per cent. Iu the coarser 
fodder it might be supposed that the nutrient 
matters are so enveloped in, or mixed with, 
the excess of woody fiber as to be in a measure 
protected from the attack of the digestive 
fluids, and that the disintegration resulting 
from thorough steaming would naturally re¬ 
move this obstacle to some extent. The above 
negative results, however, with good hay, 
where at least quite as large a proportion of 
nutritive matter remained undigestlble, indi¬ 
cate that the expected result will not follow. 
But as no digestion experiments with such 
coarse fodder, except those of Hellriegel 
above quoted, have been tried, we can get 
but little help from this quarter in the solution 
of the question. If poor and good fodder are 
