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Vol. LV. No. 2431. NEW YORK, AUGUST 29, 1806 
_____ 7 7 *1.00 PER YEAR. 
AN ICE CREAM BUSINESS IN MICHIGAN. 
CORN AND OATS THRASHED TOGETHER. 
A New Thing in Cattle Feeding. 
Just outside the eastern limits of Pontiac, Michigan, 
is situated Maple Hill, a beautiful farm, the seat of 
the dairy business of R. Bartlett & Sons. The father 
began dairying here 31 years ago; his business has 
grown somewhat, in pace with the town, and changed 
as the latter has changed. From a country village, 
Pontiac has become a thriving city—especially a sum¬ 
mer city, because of its beautiful surroundings and 
nearness to Detroit. At Maple Hill, milk selling for 
22 years was succeeded by buttermaking, and now 
this has given way to the freezer. Not a day goes by 
but has its sale of ice cream, and in summer, the busi¬ 
ness becomes a large one. Surplus cream in winter is 
sold as such, or made into butter. The demand for 
the total output is always at hand. 
The three farms aggregate 500 acres. At present, 
69 cows are 
kept; of these 
41 are giving 
milk. The cows 
are mainly 
J ersey-Ay r- 
shire crosses, 
but some pure¬ 
bred Jerseys 
are kept. The 
cross is well 
liked, gi v in g 
hardy, hearty 
animals of good 
size. 
Arrangements 
are being per¬ 
fected by which 
full data may 
be obtained, 
and records 
kept of the 
work done by 
the herd. It is 
hard to keep 
track of indi¬ 
viduals at pres¬ 
ent. Messrs. 
Bartlett expect 
t o overcome 
this by using 
an aluminium 
button. Each 
button bears 
its number and 
the initials “ B. 
& S.” The but¬ 
bottles, and churn, engine, boiler and worker, the 
ice cream melted away; and to my surprise, the 
quarter mark was passed and no feeling of chilliness 
came on, likewise the half and then I bore down on 
the home stretch. “ How do you raise your cream ? ” 
“ Fairlamb cans.” 
“ Don’t use a separator ?” 
“ No. We don’t like the cream so well for freezing, 
and the skim-milk doesn’t keep long enough to suit 
us, when we make cottage cheese.” 
“ Do you find steam handy in heating water here ?” 
“Nothing like it for power and saving of time in 
cleaning things.” 
By that time, the cream had vanished from our 
dishes, and we started to see the barns. “ We are 
connected by telephone with town, and have, also, 
water connection. By asking over the telephone for 
fire pressure, we can send a stream over the 40-foot 
brick chimney at the barn.” Entering the engine- 
room, we noted the 20-horse power engine with belt 
A MICHIGAN DAIRY BARN. HEADQUARTERS FOR ICE CREAM 
ton is smooth, is removable, and if its number could 
be enameled in color as well as raised in the metal, 
it would leave nothing more to be desired. Tests are 
now made occasionally. Fig. 178 shows a cow whose 
disagreeable disposition came near sending her to the 
butcher’s block. Before setting her apart to fatten, 
it occurred to Messrs. Bartlett to test her butter dis¬ 
position. The test showed her yield to be 16 pounds 
of butter a week. 
The dairy machinery is located in the basement of 
the big brick house. As we stepped in I saw a churn 
whirling in its rack at the beck and nod of a little 
engine. A horizontal boiler supplies steam. “Have 
a dish of cream,” said Mr. Charles S. Bartlett. 
I had been walking through a chill March wind, 
though it was February on the calendar ; so I said 
“Why! not so much; you have there too much, I 
am sure ; can’t eat a quarter.” 
“ It won’t hurt you ; it never does,” was the reas¬ 
suring answer. So I fell to, and, as we chatted of the 
attached, and the boiler in its arch near by. “ A fine 
place of a cold day when coming in from selling 
cream.” 
We inspected the stable ; this has two rows of stan¬ 
chions, and the cows face the feeding alley which runs 
lengthwise of the barn through its center. Mr. Smith 
Bartlett observed, “We know that we are not quite 
up to date in using stanchions ; we have in mind to try 
some sort of stall.” The cows stand on concrete—a 
narrow gutter behind them and a generous path 
along the sides of the building. The cows were all 
out for exercise, it being early afternoon. At one 
side of the entrance to the barn, built as an L to it, 
is the manure cellar. The cow manure is wheeled in 
every day, and the horse manure is shoveled down 
from the floor above through a trap on the side wall. 
In Mr. B.’s judgment, this is far ahead of the old way. 
Milking is done before feeding in the morning, after 
feeding at night. This is handiest here. Returning 
to the feeding alley, we found a car standing half 
way down the barn length, and on it, a large box from 
which a little steam was rising. “ We are cooking 
the night feed,” they explained. A small pipe leads 
from the boiler, and a low bubbling told the stoi’y. 
When we went to the next or main floor, we visited 
the grinding room. The hopper of the 22-inch burr 
had in it wheat, oats and corn. A corn sheller stands 
near, also a grindstone. “ One may bear on as hard 
as he pleases, and nobody kicks.” That was the key¬ 
note of the whole business—plenty of power where 
needed, and when needed. 
On the main barn floor, the cutter stands and de¬ 
livers the chaffed fodder through a trap into the car 
below. “ What! straw and corn stalks together ? ” 
“ Yes, we thrash the corn and the oats at the same 
time.” 
Mi. Smith Bartlett explained how the machinery is 
worked. “ We grind and cut at the same time, and 
do this twice a day. A spray of water falls upon the 
cut fodder, and we add meal from time to time till the 
bulk is great 
enough. At 
present, it 
takes, for each 
feed, about five 
bushels of meal 
and enough 
chopped rough- 
age to bulk up 
50 bushels after 
it is cooked. 
When through 
cutting, we 
bank the fire, 
and depend 
upon the steam 
remaining in 
the boiler to 
cook the feed. 
We wish it to 
cook 1 14 hour, 
and cook slow¬ 
ly. Steam will 
dry things, if 
too much is let 
on. We use the 
same pipe to 
convey steam 
that carried 
the water for 
spraying. I n 
this way,we are 
not troubled by 
its freezing.” 
A visit to the 
corn house fol¬ 
lowed. There 
corn and oats lay three feet deep over the floor of the 
large building. “ Just as it came from the machine. 
The oats dry out the corn, and so all keep. Some 
years, shoveling over might be needed, but not in 
1895. Last fall, we thrashed one field—11 acres of 
corn—without oats. The stalks have kept 0. K., but 
some grain heated. That was a lucky job. We began 
at 12:30 p. m., and were done at 5 p. m. Next day, it 
stormed. We left 20 shocks for seed, and they stand 
out still, frozen down. Thrashers don’t enjoy hand¬ 
ling shocks of corn, but the machine can take care of 
them fast. Only one row of concave teeth was left in 
the vibrator, but that was enough to thrash the oats. 
We like to send through a shock of corn and then two 
bundles of oats. As the fodder comes from the car¬ 
rier, it has lost much of its bulk ; it pitches readily.” 
Messrs. Bartlett stored the fodder from 25 acres of 
corn and 10 acres of oats, and still space enough was 
left for hay and wheat straw. 
“ The beauty of the whole thing is that the corn 
Fig. 178 
