been, until last Winter, greater than the sup¬ 
ply, and many efforts were made to meet the 
deficiency. These efforts, so far as meeting 
the demand for milk was concerned, were 
crowned with success a year ago, but the 
immediate result was a glutted market and a 
demoralized trade in milk. The price usually 
paid for winter milk was no longer sus¬ 
tained or remunerative, and down-calving 
cows declined pretty considerably in value. 
’The milk-trade for years before had been re 
garded as the sheet-anchor of dairy farmers, re¬ 
lieving the cheese and butter markets, and pro¬ 
viding a profitable outlet for what would other¬ 
wise ha ve been surplus milk. But at length far¬ 
mers saw with some dismay that the cherished 
milk-trade was no longer immaculately safe,the 
price of cheese kept on declining: butter was 
not a rent-paving product, and the price of 
cattle fell pretty rapidly. It may be said, in 
fact, that, a drop of SO or 30 per cent, has 
taken place in the value of cattle within 12 
months, and dairy products have I teen lower 
in price during the past Summer and Autumn 
than probably for 20 years or more. 
While inferior cattle have shrunk some 40 or 
50 per cent, in value, good stock have declined 
only 20 per cent, or so; and the original differ¬ 
ence between them has to be reckoned within 
the computation. It was never plaiuer than 
now that it will not pay to raise inferior 
cattle, and we may hope that out- farmers will 
permanently learn at all events this one im¬ 
portant lesson of adversity. 
It is more than disappointing to find that but 
little real, permanent progress has been made 
during the past 10 or 15 years in the practice 
of cheese and butter making in the farm-houses 
of England. A great deal of pains has been 
taken by the press, and in other ways, to in¬ 
culcate sound dairy principles, but it does not 
yet appear that the rank and file of our dairy¬ 
maids produce much better dairy goods now 
than they did a score of years ago. A few 
years ago there were signs of a general im¬ 
provement, but there has been more or less of 
retrogression since. This retrogression is at¬ 
tributed to the wet seasoas, which have done 
so much to reduce the fertility of the soil, to 
diminish the nutrient properties of the herbage 
erably near perfection, and a spirit of emula¬ 
tion is inseperable from marked and general 
progress in such a thing as daily work. 
Many opportunities for tuition in dairy mat¬ 
ters have been offered to the public, who, I re¬ 
gret to say, have to a very limited extent 
availed themselves of such chances of improve¬ 
ment. 
The cheese factories established in this 
country have done a great amount of good, 
but they have not been uniformly successful! 
We have no great number of them even now— 
perhaps 30 or so—but there is a disposition to 
increase the number. The chief reason why 
they have not become more numerous is found 
m the rapidly expanding milk trade of the 
last 10 or 15 years; but since the milk trade 
became upset, many fanners have turned their 
attention once more to cheese-making, and a 
few additional cheese factories have been 
built. The disastrous lack of uniformity in 
farm-house cheese, is a leading cause of failure 
in commanding high prices: and herein the 
factories have a great advantage, for factory 
cheese, whatever else may be said of it, is tol¬ 
erably uniform in character. 
^ low price of ordinary ana 
M inferior cheese of late years, 
yll ( ^ ias thrown a gloom over 
J ji ' dairying, no doubt, and yet 
ff everybody knows that really 
w k g° f, d cheese is always in brisk 
demand, and even now com- 
f| mauds a good price. We have 
a few butter factories in Great 
Britain, and most of them have 
done very well; have demon- 
SsOyff Jr strated the value of sound 
M ( principles, and have returned 
t a good price for the milk they 
f inf y manipulate. In Ireland, where 
al? dairy tuition has made very 
i important improvements in 
years, there is a growing 
Jjv' y ^ consensus of opinion in favor 
of butter factories; and it may 
Jr be expected that the Emerald 
Isl® will, with the help of these 
institutions, regainagood deal 
of her pristine reputation for 
butter. Man^tfrish dairy- 
\) ’ maids are re n d» Mi bly clever, 
—thanks to the tuition dis- 
^ seminated by the managers of 
the Munster Dairy School. 
That a low average range 
of prices for cattle and dairy 
produce will prevail for some 
time to come, appears highly 
probable, and we probably 
shall uot see again in a hurry 
^<5^ the halcyon days of 1871 and 
lSTfi. During the past ten 
years, much of the money 
previously made by farmers 
in England has been ebbing 
away, and also in dairy farm- 
page) . ing there has been a great deal 
of loss of late. A general state- 
l ment of this sort holds good no doubt in 
respect of the Eastern States of America, and 
it is owing directly or indirectly to the vast 
territories which railroads have opened up to 
cultivation, and to the consequent increase 
of agricultural products. So loug as the area 
of the cultivatable world was narrowed down 
for want of means of communication, the 
production, nor of grain only, but of beef and 
of dairy goods, was necessarily limited; but 
steam lias made, theoretically at least, the 
earth's production of food illimitable. This 
expansion we have to reckon with, in the fu¬ 
ture, and in new of it there seems but little 
chance of agriculture becoming a very pros¬ 
perous business for some years to come. Yet, 
as nothing is so “certain as the unforeseen,” a 
man does wisely in not pretending to be a 
prophet. Meantime we must live somehow, 
and cheap food is an untold boon to all the 
millions who toil and moil for their daily 
bread. In Britain, at all events, which can¬ 
not produce much more than the bread her 
people want, cheap food from abroad is of 
the first importance. 
Surrey, England., Jan. 1st,"1886. 
weather has been l w below zero, but by oper- 
ating the ventilators we had no trouble in 
keeping the barns at an even temperature of 
55° even in the coldest days. 
JOTTINGS. 
We have several hen houses, each located in 
a different place in the orchard. They are 
double-boarded, with tarred paper between, 
and with large windows on the 
south side. In each we keep a 
stock of hens and by raising 
several broods of chickens in /{, 
each,there is no trouble in fceej>- f 
ing the liens and chickens scat- V 
tered all over the orchards. Zsygyi 
We have never found a bet. V jj) i/Jt 
ter insecticide for all class of / W '/->£ 
insects that ever come to the L.- N! *y 
ground than an old hen with a I V teff • 
brood of chicks, unless per- |V 4 \' i 
chance it be a clutch of ducks. i ' 
And our orchards, so far as / 
the hens roam, are entirely / //wPf 
clear from insects. I ,/\ - 4^ 
There is also a good margin itf/f 
of profit in the rearing of the >!( | W3J 
chickens, especially so in an 
open Winter like this, when , 
they are able to forage for nl- f /Wj'/ 
most their whole living. We 
sold January 12th over a fjjr 
ton of chickens, raised in the / i 
orchards, at 11 cents per pound ' 
for the bodies with the blood 
out and the feathers off. This 
pays better than pork at 4J $ cents per pound 
dressed weight. 
You have discovered this in America, of 
course, for our markets correspond with yours 
to a considerable extent in cheese and butter, as 
well as in beef. We. at all events, have found 
a serious shrinkage in the value of everything 
belonging to the dairy, aud though a healthier 
tone prevails now in some departments, we do 
not discern much chance of a marked and per¬ 
manent improvement. The milk trade is 
settling down into a more satisfactory con¬ 
dition than that which characterized it a 
twelvemonth ago, and there are an improved 
demand and better prices for calving cows; 
but in respect of young ami barren cattle ayd 
of cheeee, there is no improvement at present. 
Butter, it is true, has regained some of the 
1HE CONDITION OF DAIRY FARMING 
IN ENGLAND. 
PROF. J. p. SUKLDON. 
La,e prosperity of dairying, present depres¬ 
sion; overdone trade; disastrous results; 
advantage of superior over inferior cattle; 
little improvement in cheese and butter 
making; reasons therefor; cheese factories; 
prospect ive prices. 
The year just concluded may be reckoned 
as the worst of the last twenty, so far as dairy 
farming is concerned Other branches of ag¬ 
riculture had beeu laboring under severe de¬ 
pression for seven or eight years, particularly 
that devoted to grain raising, hut, until the 
early Spring of 1885, dairy farming had been 
so far more profitable than auy other sort,that 
no end of people began to look upon it with 
envious eyes, and it attained a measure of pop¬ 
ularity which it never aforetime enjoyed. The 
long-sustained prosperity which had disting¬ 
uished it, was the result of several causes, one 
ot the chief of which was the high price of cat¬ 
tle ; this iu its turn Was the result, of a still tlour- 
ishiug meat market and a well sustained de¬ 
maud for href. Stock-raising, which is or ought 
t' 1 be a prominent feature in dairy farms in gen¬ 
eral, remained a very good business, and farm- 
11 s ^ la< ^ 00 difficulty in disposing of anything 
good they had to sell hi the way of cattle. 
Graziers made good prices off their fat stock, 
and the demand l’or hammers for fattening 
purposes was tolerably brisk the year round. 
Many dairy farmers, indeed, had relinquished 
< an j iug iu favor of fattening, but they found 
a *' 1 a that fattening began to show signs 
ot relaxation, and not a few of them returned 
o i airying once more, only to find that de- 
wefi 00 ' VaS ConiiQf? l ‘ I>wn tbat industry as 
it was surprising, however, how well 
< any 1 arming held its ground, in the 
Ce j 1,1 a 11 almost all-round gloom. Cheese 
and butter had shrunk greatly In price since 
,, ‘ ’’. a “ d tho wot Summers had diminished 
the yield of both- Still, dairying as a whole, 
ield its own well enough, all things considered. 
1 01 tlus prolomred 
ipr*£ue. 
MILKING WHILE EATING, 
Some people advise that something to eat 
should be given cows while being milked. 
Now, I never can or could milk most eow 3 
with any comfort, while eating; for I have 
always found that it makes them uueasy and 
quite irrirable to meddle with them in any 
wav while they are feeding. Then they step 
back aud forth to select the choice morsels of 
feed, and if they are chidden they are pretty 
sure to kick, no matter how gentle thev mav 
bo at other times; and, moreover, they are 
very likely to withhold their milk. The bet¬ 
ter way is to give them a little feed or hay 
preferably the former, and let them eat it all 
up before one undertakes to milk them. This 
From Nature. Fig. 42, 
outter wilt recede ouce more. So far as cattle 
and cattle and cheese are concerned, more 
particularly thau in respect of butter and 
milk, the decline in value has taken place 
most of all in inferior specimens and qualities. 
here* is more than cent per cent, disparity 
between good cattle aud bad ones, aud the 
same may be said in reference to cheese. 
of the mischief with many cheese and butter 
makers. I admit the need of tuition is consid¬ 
ered tantamount to a confession of 
uiiuamouni to a confession of ignorance, 
and this sort of thing does uot commend itself 
to adult human uature on the average. [That is 
jnst as true on this side of the Atlantic as on 
the other.— Eds. 1 To seek for information is not 
popular with people who faucy themselves toL 
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