1896 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
4 i 5 
the ensilage is not, still its succulence helps won¬ 
derfully in keeping the sheep's system cool, and fur¬ 
nishing plenty of milk by the ewes. I have heard so 
many good things of the cow peas, that I purpose to 
try a few this summer. There seems no doubt that 
cattle eat them readily. Now, if they are equally 
good for sheep, they will be of great value as a sub¬ 
stitute for clover hay. The only question, then, to be 
solved is, Can they be grown so far north, and to a 
sufficient degree of maturity to make good food in 
time, so that the weather will permit them to be 
cured ? This settled in the affirmative, they will have 
a great value here. They have this advantage over 
Canada peas, they are not subject to mildew, and 
grow best when the weather is hot and dry ; so they 
can be safely sown at any time in June, and do not 
do well if sown before the usual cold June rain. 
Canada peas do best if sown quite early, and if not 
so sown, are quite liable to be seriously injured by 
the mildew. J. s. woodward. 
Bean Straw; Oats and Peas; Roots. 
The question of substituting some other fodder for 
clover hay for sheep is, at best, a serious one. and it 
is all the more trying when the decision must be made 
at this time of the year. To my knowledge, nothing 
equals the legumes as a coarse fodder for 
sheep, when it is desired to raise early 
lambs. Well-cured clover hay most 
nearly approaches the ideal fodder. Many 
early lamb raisers have succeeded fairly 
well by feeding well-cured bean straw, 
when the clover hay ran short. While 
this does not equal the hay, yet it makes 
a good substitute, and when fed ju¬ 
diciously with plenty of roots, the flow 
of milk may be kept up fairly well. If 
bean straw cannot be secured, I would, by 
all means, sow oats and field peas mixed. 
Cut these green and cure for hay. Cow 
peas, when grown under favorable con¬ 
ditions, produce a fairly good crop, and 
make, when cured, good sheep fodder. 
As the cow pea is a hot weather plant, it 
is not likely to give satisfaction under 
all conditions. It is usually disappoint¬ 
ing on heavy clay soils. When planted 
on a deep, rich loam, in a warm season, 
with plenty of moisture, there should be 
no difficulty in securing a good growth of 
excellent sheep fodder. The variety 
known as the Whippoorwill is recom¬ 
mended for the latitude of Pennsylvania 
and farther north. If it is doubtful about 
securing a sufficient quantity of good hay 
for the sheep, plans should be made for 
raising an abundance of roots. If the 
supply of roots run short, without good 
hay the result could not be other than 
disastrous. With a partial supply of 
clover hay, and patching out with beans 
or Canada peas or cow peas, with a good 
supply of roots, the flow of milk can be 
kept up tolerably well. The idea is to 
feed for milk production. As a rule, man¬ 
gels give better satisfaction than turnips 
for sheep. They are more easily kept in 
prime condition than are flat turnips. 
Sheep eat turnips fairly well until they 
get pithy, then they are not so good 
as mangels. The latter should have been 
planted early in the spring. If the sup¬ 
ply of these roots is not likely to be ample, turnips 
should be sown a little later, the turnips fed first, and 
the mangels later in the season. geo. c. watson. 
Pennsylvania Agricultural College. 
How to Grow Oats and Peas. 
Oats and peas sown thickly, two bushels of the 
former and not less than a bushel of the latter, per 
acre, will make an excellent substitute for clover hay. 
True, some of the stalks of the oats will not be eaten, 
but sheep are able to pick them over so closely that 
little waste will occur, and the uneaten particles can 
hardly be called waste, since they may be used as 
necessary bedding. It is not too late to sow these 
plants for forage. The peas would better be put in 
two or three inches deep, with a gang plow or some 
similar implement, and the oats drilled in at a less 
depth. At this time of year, the roller would better 
be used after the plants have come through the 
ground two or three inches, unless the ground be so 
dry at seeding time that it will be necessary to roll 
immediately in order to promote germination. If a 
liberal amount of nitrogenous concentrated foods be 
fed, the ewes will eat and relish, and do well, on a 
greater or less amount of dry straw. It is surprising 
how much they will eat of this, if the ration be made 
narrow, that is, if a liberal amount of oil meal and 
cotton-seed meal be mixed with the bran and corn 
meal. The lambs eat but little roughness, in any 
ease, and can be largely maintained on the ordinary 
concentrated foods. It is not too late to plant man¬ 
gels, if the ground is in prime condition. Or com¬ 
mon white flat turnips may be grown between the 
rows of corn, or on some of the ground where clover 
has failed, and both of these being carbonaceous, and 
the mangels especially beneficial in promoting the 
flow of milk, will go well with the oats, peas, and 
Straw. _ I. P. ROBERTS. 
USE AND CARE OF CREAM SEPARATORS. 
SOME CAUSES FOR POOR WORK. 
Part I. 
The invention of the principle of the centrifugal 
separation of cream, whereby, as some one has said, 
we “ force the fat globules out, instead of coaxing 
them out,” marks a new era in dairy science. Like 
most inventions, it is the record of an idea, slowly de¬ 
veloped and improved, until, at present, the cream 
separator has, perhaps, in all essential principles, 
reached its limit. It has been a wonderful evolution 
from the clumsy contrivances brought to this country 
in the late ’70's, up to one of our beautiful modern 
machines, skimming 4,500 pounds of milk per hour. 
It is like ancient history to read of the strange sep¬ 
arators in use at the famous Deer Foot Farm in 1880. 
The first of these was of an intermittent type, that 
is to say, a “ charge ” of milk was run into the “metal 
drum,” and revolved at about 1,000 revolutions per 
minute for from 15 to 40 minutes, when separation 
having been completed, the cream was removed by 
means of a “ pipe-scoop ” (the germ of the Danish- 
Weston of to-day), and then, another “ charge ” beffig 
introduced, the process was repeated. The bowl of 
this truly remarkable machine was two feet in 
diameter, and 10 inches deep, made from 950 to 1,040 
revolutions per minute, and could separate three 
“ charges” or 700 to 800 pounds of milk per hour. The 
cream and milk were so badly frothed as to be doubled 
in bulk. The cream separator in this form could 
never have been much more than a very interesting 
dairy toy. 
The great forward step was, as one of the early pat¬ 
ents specifies, “ the continuous separation of milk in 
a closed cylinder,” and with this idea, the invention 
was an assured success. It was a very simple im¬ 
provement—the automatic withdrawal of the sepa¬ 
rated cream, instead of “ its periodic removal accord¬ 
ing to the judgment of the operator.” Since then, the 
separators, all exactly alike in principle, have re¬ 
moved the cream by one of two different methods— 
either the old idea of scooping up the cream by means 
of a curved tube brought to a sharp, cutting edge, 
and so constructed as to be moved in or out, thus tak¬ 
ing a greater or less proportion of the whole as cream 
—a method still used in the Danish-Weston. The other 
consists of a system of tubes running to the extreme 
outside of the bowl, and another tube running to a 
point near the center, thus being so adjusted, one to 
the other, that a small portion of the whole supply of 
milk will pass through the tube running to the center, 
constituting the cream, while skim-milk, which occu¬ 
pies a position next the outside of the bowl, is drawn 
off by tubes or openings at this point, and discharged 
into separate conductors. 
Making separation a continuous process—a very 
natural step—was, then, the first great advance. The 
next idea which marked an epoch in separator con¬ 
struction, was the breaking up, or sectional division, 
of the solid wall of mi k in the bowl. This was done 
by the “Alpha” disks about 1890, and this feature 
worked such a revolution in separator building, that 
from that time, all but one or two makes of machines 
have been obliged to use some modification of the 
great idea. Previous to that time, all separator bowls 
were essentially hollow metal cylinders, with simple 
wings on the inside. Since then, the favorite occu¬ 
pation of inventors has been to put almost any kind 
of a tin device, punched full of holes, into 
the bowls. One of the largest separator 
firms is said to have tried, literally, hun¬ 
dreds of different devices in its bowls, 
some of them better than others, but 
doubtless, the poorest a great improve¬ 
ment upon the old-fashioned hollow bowl 
of a half dozen years ago. 
But the separator is here, and as it ex¬ 
ists at present, is a very perfect machine. 
What the future will bring to it, we do 
not know. Probably, we shall come to 
separate our milk at a lower temperature, 
something any separator will do now if 
the rate of inflow be reduced sufficiently. 
The alluring scheme of butter direct from 
the milk, while it has often been accom¬ 
plished with some measure of success, has 
still many grave difficulties in the way, 
and probably, does not seem so near at 
hand as it did five years ago. 
What, then, as to the care and use of 
the separator as it exists to-day, espe¬ 
cially the smaller sizes in use upon the 
farm ? The separator is not a complex 
machine, in the sense of multiplicity of 
parts ; but it is emphatically a machine 
of delicate adjustment. The most usual 
way in which a machine is liable to get 
out of order, is the ott repeated com¬ 
plaint that “the bowl shakes.” This is a 
very common and, when not remedied, 
serious matter. It is especially trouble¬ 
some in the smaller machines. While a 
slight jar does little harm, any pronounced 
wabbling or rattling of a bowl when up to 
speed, will, perhaps, seriously impair the 
work of the machine. By far the most 
usual cause of a shaking bowl, lies in the 
rubber ring which cushions the upper 
bearing of the bowl spindle. Even with 
all care, this ring becomes saturated with 
oil which swells it unequally, on one side 
or the other, thus throwing the bowl 
spindle out of line with the lower spindle, 
and causing the bowl to wabble some¬ 
times so badly as to make it almost impossible to run 
it at all. This trouble is especially perplexing be¬ 
cause of its sometimes temporary nature. A machine 
may run all right at night, and very badly in the 
morning ; or it may even run very poorly for a part 
of a run, and suddenly settle down and run smoothly 
for the rest of the time, owing to some slight change 
in the position of the rubber ring or to the swelling 
equalizing itself. The only thing to do is to put in a 
new ring, and keep it as free from oil as possible. It 
may last for months, or it may swell unequally and 
trouble again almost immediately. This rubber ring 
may also be ruined by heating the bearing so hot as 
to burn it—a not very infrequent occurrence with 
power machines. An effort is being made to replace 
this rubber cushion by one made of coiled steel wire, 
which will not be affected by oil or time. 
A shaking bowl may also be caused by the machine 
being set out of level, although I have never been able 
to see that a slight change in this respect would make 
as much difference as is often stated. Still, a sepa¬ 
rator should be set as nearly level as can be deter¬ 
mined by a spirit level resting in any direction across 
the top of the bowl frame, and it is very necessary 
that it be set on something solid, preferably a cement 
floor or stone pier. Absolute firmness of foundation, 
will often overcome any tendency to shake. 
Another cause of a bowl shaking, and one which 
A PLANT OF MAYES HYBRID DEWBERRY. Fig. 137. See First Page 
