363 
JUNE 4 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
tic and do a little figuring. His attention 
should be called to the fact that he feeds his 
beef for 10 years befoi’e he realizes a cent on 
it: and if he can be induced to make an hon¬ 
est calculation of the cost of his beef, and if 
he then tries to subtract that amount from 
■what he gets for it, he will become a convert 
before he gets through the job. Feeding a 
1,400-pound cow for 10 years, getting mean¬ 
while 1,500 pounds of butter from her, or 
feeding a 900-pound cow for the same length 
of time and getting 3,000 pounds of butter, 
which is the more profitable? There are 
some who can't answer that rightly, or, to put 
the matter in another way, say the big cow 
makes as much butter as the small one dur¬ 
ing 10 years of dairy work, is she as profit- 
'R.fi.-X. 
Fig. 135. 
and fancied I could see how they were trying 
hard to persuade themselves that ensilage was 
a good thing, and in the course of time I 
found myself shoving green corn through a 
power cutter, and now I believe those men 
were right. So we must not let our prejudices 
run away with our good judgment, uo matter 
whether they pertain to the silo or the cow. 
W e can make a profit by feeding dry corn 
fodder, but if we can make a greater one by 
feeding it green, why not do so? When a 
man shows that he has made a profit in dairy¬ 
ing while keeping big cows, he ought to be 
amenable to reason and see if he can not 
make a bigger profit with smaller cows. 
The Churn: —Our grandmothers used the 
upright dash churn, gathered the butter in a 
lump, worked out the butter-milk and worked 
in the salt with their hands, and printed it by 
shaping the pat on the mold with those same 
hands. And they always got the bottom of 
the print just convex enough so that it was 
impossible, when the butter was on the table, 
to cut off a slice without turning the print 
upside down. That butter had the true 
butter-milk flavor, and there are many to-day 
who insist that brine-washed granular butter 
has no flavor. So much for what we are 
used to. 
The Thermometer: —Why, a thermometer 
on a farm in those days was as rare as I hope 
the general-purpose cow will be by the time 
the Rural grows 500 bushels of potatoes on 
half an acre of ground. (Don’t smile, friends; 
you and I will live to see it; it is only the good 
that die young.) The cream was tested as to 
its temperature and acidity by the finger and 
tongue. But now, through the medium of 
the farm papers, the use of the creamery, the 
churn with no dash, tho butter-worker, the 
thermometer, and all the modern implements 
able? “Yes, because you have 500 pounds 
more beef to sell.” Well, my friend, I 
sympathize with you; I thought that way 
myself once, but I don’t now. 
' Steer Dairying: I used to believe that 
steer dairying brought in the most money. 
I had it all down on paper as plain as could 
be, but somehow it would not work out right 
in practice. In steer dairying, as in all other 
kinds, tli9 bull plays a very important part. 
He must have beef points in order to give us 
good steers, and if he has beef points well de¬ 
veloped, his milk points are just the reverse. 
So we try to coax ourselves to believe that a 
beefy cow will pay her way with the help of 
the sti»,;rs. But will she do it? Not in the 
East -where land and feed are high; or in the 
West where dairying is made the business of 
the farm; but where land and feed are cheap 
and labor scarce and there is plenty of pas¬ 
ture, a man may make a living by steer 
dairying, but so he may by turning his hogs 
into the corn-field to save the expense of har¬ 
vesting. Butter, milk, or beef? If you choose 
your cow for one of the three you are safe; if 
for two, you are carrying a useless and ex¬ 
pensive burden: but if for all three— 
The Silo :—It looks now as if the dairyman 
will be compelled to feed silage if he expects 
to get the best profit. Silage as it comes out 
of the silo, is the same feed that went into it, 
only it is partially cooked. It gives a succu¬ 
lent feed, cheaper by far than any root crop, 
and as much better as it is cheaper. We can¬ 
not afford to grow roots in competition with 
ensilage corn. The silo saves feeding so much 
hay; more hay can be sold, and those living 
within reach of a good hay market this win¬ 
ter will appreciate the silo more than ever. 
If any one is now more prejudiced against the 
silo than I once was, he is to be pitied. I read 
about it until I hated to see the word in print. 
I read the experience of those having silos 
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Fig 136. 
and methods of dairying, is becoming the rule 
instead of the exception, a. l. crosby. 
fyoxsamn. 
CLItEII11 FOB NORSES 
Mr. Terry’s Plai Considered 
THE SECRET OF HIS SUCCESS. 
A Matter of Farm Adaptation. 
Best Quality Clover as Good as Oats. 
POOR .CLOVER HAY WORSE THAN STRAW. 
As our readers know, Mr. T. B. Terry, of 
Ohio, is a man who does not hesitate to think 
and act for himself. He does not farm in any 
■‘rut,” but follows the practices that seem 
best adapted to his own farm conditions. 
I or example, Mr. Terry decided some years 
ago that it would not pay him to raise grain 
for his horses. He also decided that good 
clover hay would keep them in good condition 
without any grain. Thus for seven years his 
horses have not eaten grain. A very full ac¬ 
count of his way of feeding and the reasons 
for it were given on page 68 of the Rural for 
the current year. In the Hay Special, page 
329, the plan followed in curing clover hay 
was given. This system of feeding no grain 
has caused quite a little comment. Below we 
give the views of some of our correspondents. 
FROM C. S. RICE. 
Mr. Terry’s success in keeping his horses on 
clover hay without grain is not a surprise to 
me. Many years ago a man just over from 
England fed and drove my team for the sea¬ 
son. He was an expert plowman and man¬ 
ager and trainer of farm horses, having been 
employed on a large farm in that capacity 
nearly all his life. My team was fed good 
Timothy bay and from four to six quarts 
of oats three times a day for each horse. 
After feeding and driving the team two or 
three months, he said .to me that he would as 
soon have such clover bay as he had been ac¬ 
customed to feed to horses in England with¬ 
out any grain as to have my Timothy and 
grain combined. As he was a man of exper¬ 
ience, truthfulness and sound judgment, I 
believed his statement to be true, but as per¬ 
haps one-third of the horses in this section 
had the heaves and many farmers thought 
clover was the cause of the trouble, I con¬ 
tinued to feed Timothy hay and grain. A 
few years afterwards, however, when I began 
raising clover without mixing it with Timo¬ 
thy, some of it was put in the horse barn, and 
I then thought and still think that it was by 
far the best hay ever fed to my teams. It 
was cut when just red over the field, and nice¬ 
ly cured in the cock. The same season 
I discovered the great value of such clover 
for cows giving milk, and have since fed it to 
them rather than to the horses. 
With the crops raised on Mr. Terry’s farm 
and the amount and kind of labor required of 
his horses, his method of keeping them is, no 
doubt, the best and cheapest that could be 
practiced. Where teams are required to do 
steady full labor for months in succession a 
more concentrated ration may be needed. 
Again, where a crop of peas and oats can be 
grown to more profit than wheat,I think that 
a team can be kept in the comparative idle¬ 
ness of winter on straw and grain as cheaply 
as on clover hay. My horses weighing 1,200 
pounds each, are fed pea and oat straw, and 
12 to 15 quarts of pea and oat meal and bran 
mixed in equal bulk. They-are harnessed 
nearly every day, but their work is light. 
They are well wintered in this way and I 
have never known them to be sick when so 
fed. In spring, Timothy hay is used instead 
of straw. Having clover hay, and peas and 
oats and straw, and cows giving milk, and 
horses to winter, I would feed grain and 
clover to the cows and grain and straw to 
the horses. In Northern New York wheat can¬ 
not be raised with profit when prices are as 
low as they have been for the last few years; 
but ptas and oats yielding double the number 
FRONT 
D Kitchen 
ii xi? 
, p 
Fig. 137. 
of bushels to the acre and weighing 40 to 50 
pounds to the bushel, can be raised and 
profitably used on the farm for feeding cows, 
horses and pigs. I doubt whether keeping 
horses on clover hay alone would result in 
any gain over my present method that has 
been in use many years. 
Lewis County, N. Y. 
FROM SAVAGE & FARNUM. 
Mr. T. B, Terry’s plan of feeding simply 
hay and no grain is undoubtedly the best 
plan for him, but there are many things to be 
taken into consideration in connection there¬ 
with. The personal care, and, no doubt, 
kindly treatment, though Mr. Terry makes 
no mention of the latter farther than to say 
that his horses are not worried by the driver, 
have a great deal to do with the fine con¬ 
dition of the animals. 
There is not much doubt that Mr. Terry 
could with the team he mentions, fed on 
good clean wheat straw and carrots, do 
more work and keep them in better con¬ 
dition, than the brawling Jehu with his 
big whip would do with a team fed on the best 
hay and oats. The exhibitions of life Mr. 
Terry speaks of, are no doubt in a measure 
due to good fellowship between driver and 
team rather than to the crack of the whip and 
the terrorizing howl so often indulged in by 
the ordinary teamster. But to get back to 
the hay question: Mr. Terry’s hay is cut so as 
to save all of the properties that it originally 
contained, while most hay is handled so as 
largely to destroy the life-sustaining principle 
it contains. Then again, the character of the 
land upon which hay is grown has largely to 
do with the quality and consequently the 
value of the produce. It is possible on good 
land to produce hay containing all the quali¬ 
ties requisite for the building up of the frame 
and muscular tissues of a horse and sustaining 
him in good health and condition while doing 
a fair amount of work; but many horses are 
compelled to perform unreasonable tasks. 
Nice attention to the an’mal’s bodily comfort 
is not thought of, and to adopt the no-grain 
theory generally would soon leave us a sorry- 
looking lot of horses and there would be no 
economy in the end, as oats at #20 per ton are 
cheaper than the average bay at #10 per ton 
and grain generally is cheaper than hay when 
its real feeding value is taken into account. 
Fig. 138. 
FROM JOHN M. TRUE. 
My experience in the use of early-cut, well 
cured clover hay for horses, has led me to a 
very enthusiastic belief in its superiority over 
all other kinds of hay or coarse fodder. I con¬ 
sider it admirably adapted to the promotion 
of the best results as a feed for growing colts 
and brood mares, and these animals, notwith¬ 
standing that a change of feed is conducive 
to healthfulness, as well as welcome to their 
tastes, might thrive well on clover hay, with¬ 
out grain, were it necessary to restrict them 
to any one given feed. But in my opinion 
the feeding of less hay and a little wheat bran 
or whole oats, will not only prove more ac¬ 
ceptable to the animals, but also tend to 
better results in building up the bony structui e 
of th a growing young, as well as in pro¬ 
moting its general thrift. In my own case, I 
consider such a mixture of feed, as also an 
occasional feed of corn fodder, and even 
straw, not only economical but healthful. 
With the work horse upon the farm, I 
would also use clover hay, but would prefer 
to feed less hay and a grain feed, as tending 
to less distension of the stomach, furnishing a 
more concentrated ration, enabling the horse 
to perform heavy continuous labor with 
greater ease and less waste of forces. I do 
not consider clover a good feed for horses that 
are subjected to hard driving upon the road, 
unless very lightly fed, preferring good Tim¬ 
othy haj', and a liberal supply of oats. I do 
not doubt that Mr. Terry has been able upon 
his small farm, in his systematic and gentle 
handling of teams, to produce the exact re¬ 
sults he claims; but I do not believe that our 
larger farmers who subject their teams to 
hard, continuous labor, will do well, in their 
appreciative regard for clover hay, to ignore 
other equally natural and healthful food 
rations furnished by some of our grains. 
BaraDoo, Wisconsin. 
FROM J. W. BOOKER. 
I have read with interest Mr. Terry’s article 
on clover hay for horses, which tells of a prac¬ 
tice entirely new to me. I cannot find a horee- 
Fig. 139. 
owner in this vicinity who favors Mr. Terry’s 
plan of feeding all hay and no grain, especially 
for working horses. I doubt if our Western 
farmers with whom the raising of horses is so 
important a part of their work, would be able 
to mature a colt as early as they now do, with¬ 
out grain. My experience in raising colts 
pi oves, to my entire satisfaction, that plenty 
of grain is necessary for early maturity as 
well as for production of bone and muscle. 
Champaign, Ill. 
