Vol. LXIV. No. 2867. NEW YORK, JANUARY 7, 1905. *i per year. 
A HARD PROBLEM IN DAIRYING. 
Shall We Buy Grain for Feeding ? 
TVc have a dairy of ‘_ , r> cows, which, with three horses, 
will be wintered mostly on hay. \Ve have three or four 
tons of oats and one-half ton of buckwheat shorts on 
hand, which with the hay comprises the food provision. 
Good barn and abundant water. The oats will he ground 
for feed, but we hope to save them until after January 1, 
as cows are nearly dry now. Some hay will be drawn 
as much ns 12 miles from another farm. We have no 
straw to feed. Will you inform me whether the cows can be 
kept in good condition without buying more grain, and if 
grain will be required, what will be the “most economical to 
buy and how much, and when to feed to best advantage? 
Do you think welt of barley sprouts for economy and 
results? I>o you think it advisable to buy molasses to feed 
the cows, and what kind is used? In the absence of corn or 
roots, it seems as if some form of “sugar - would tend to 
keep the cattle in health. This farm is situated in north¬ 
ern Herkimer County, and there are many farmers who 
have no more grain to feed according to their stock than I 
help in dairying. I would try hard to raise some corn 
fodder. I cannot see why the inquirer cannot make 
some good gilt-edge butter on his farm. If I were 
managing that farm I would make calculations another 
season to have those cows give milk part of the Win¬ 
ter; strip them down, that’s what we keep them for. 
Feed them well, of course; it will pay. Make butter; 
keep some good hogs. 1 know if the dairy is a fairly 
good one they will pay the extra feed required if man¬ 
aged right. But now, as things are, cows dry or nearly 
so, all that can be done is to get them through the Win¬ 
ter for business in the Spring. Don’t scrimp them; 
keep them in good condition, even if mill feed is high. 
Cows are machines; if you put nothing in you get noth¬ 
ing out. W. S. G. 
Lewis Co., N. Y. 
H. E. Cook's Opinion. 
market for the milk, or there is no use. Whether good 
results will follow hay feed will depend much upon the 
hay. If early-cut clover and Timothy or Alfalfa, they 
will do very well without grain; if late-cut, you have 
a hard proposition. If grain was added I should feed 
oats or bran while cows are dry. Keep away from the 
so-called “sugar” feed. You have already more sugar 
and starch than you can economically use. These 
“sugar” feeds contain small amounts of protein and 
large amounts of fiber, and arc never economical to 
buy. 1 should certainly arrange to provide some scheme 
for handling the milk, so that a steady market would 
he supplied. There is small profit in dairying unless 
one has a steady market at full prices, which is cer¬ 
tainly obtainable if one looks out for it. Malt sprouts 
are good feed. h. e. cook. 
What a Connecticut Dairyman Thinks. 
have mentioned above. Their output is the same as ours, 
produced on the farm, butter, cheese, veal and pork. There 
is no milk station or public cheese factory within reach. 
It is an open question whether it 
is more profitable to buy grain or 
to winter the stock on hay with 
what little grain they raise. Corn 
is an uncertain crop on many 
farms on account of the early 
frosts. On t lie more southerly 
farms (which Include others of our 
own) in Herkimer County much 
more grain is raised, and a good 
deal of grain “feed" is bought. As 
the price of milk warrants the ex¬ 
penditure the cows are incidentally 
well nourished. The conditions are 
so different that we cannot take 
them as an example. DAIRYMAN. 
Herkimer Co., N. Y. 
An Old-fashioned Dairyman . 
As these cows are nearly dry 
1 think with good hay and a 
light grain ration the inquirer 
can bring them through in good 
shape to begin business in 
Spring. But I do not believe 
in letting a dairy go dry half 
or even quarter of the time, 
as a cow ought to give milk at 
least 10 months in the year. As 
this dairy is nearly dry that point 
now is past remedy. Even this 
being the case, I would not think 
of entirely dispensing with a 
light grain ration, for a little 
grain will save hay, and your 
cows will be in much better 
shape when they come fresh. 
As for grain ration, I would take 
the oats and add two tons ot bran and one ton of corn- 
meal ; have the oats ground, of course, and mix the 
bran and cornmeal with them. Provided the cows are 
now all in good condition, two feedings of good 
hay per day, with two quarts of the mixed grain 
ought to bring them through up to the time 
when they come fresh in good condition. After they 
begin to give milk they would require more hay and 
grain. I always believe in raising just as much of my 
grain as possible. I believe by using a good commercial 
fertilizer it will help out wonderfully in getting a heavy 
grain crop. I raise a mixture of peas, oats and barley; 
have it ground well; it makes a very good grain 
ration. Willi 28 cows and three horses we manage to 
get away with between 800 and 000 bushels of this 
mixture in the course of a year. We make milk for 
the city market, and milk the year round, using lots of 
corn silage also. What is the cause of not getting a 
good corn crop in Herkimer County? We are con¬ 
siderably farther north, and we can get good corn. We 
get an early variety and put in as soon as ground is 
fit in early Spring. A good corn crop is a wonderful 
I do not think these dry or half-dry cows can be made 
to pay for grain feed, neither will they pay for the coarse 
“A ONE-HORSE FARMER.” PRIZE PICTURE FROM C. M. WHITNEY. Fig. 1. 
feed grown upon the farm. It is surely a false concep¬ 
tion that cows should not be expected to pay for home¬ 
grown feeds. It is a most unsatisfactory condition of 
affairs to find milk worth $1.50 per 100 pounds in the 
late Fall and early Winter, and only strippings to sell 
from Spring-calving cows, and those only partly fed 
during the Summer. I am now milking a bunch of five 
heifers with first calf that are giving 100 pounds a day, 
December 17, and due to calve from March to May 1, 
which means that they have been milked already an 
average of over nine months. That milk is worth 
at my door $1.50 per 100 pounds, or $1.50 a day 00 
cents apiece. 1 he best one is giving 42 cents a day. 
Their ration is eight pounds grain and all the 
coarse feed they will eat. I hey had grain all Summer, 
about five pounds daily. Don’t you think that is the 
solution, of the whole question? It is a physiological 
impossibility to expect these animals to dry up on slack 
feed, and then suddenly, like the opening of a race¬ 
way, run full speed. Nature does not do her work in 
that way. Milk flow must be continuous in an animal; 
it cannot be spasmodic. Of course one must have a 
No doubt this herd of cows would come out 
better in the Spring if grain were bought for them. 
But grain feeding at ruling 
prices demands a gilt-edged mar¬ 
ket. The writer knows of suc¬ 
cessful dairies where hay is the 
chief coarse fodder rather than 
corn fodder or silage. But the 
hay is fine, early-cut and nutri¬ 
tious. We are not told the quality 
of this Herkimer County hay. If 
it is No. 1 cow hay, consider¬ 
ing the market he describes, he 
would better leave the grain 
alone. The question of pur¬ 
chasing grain for.making medi¬ 
um-priced dairy products i§ 
widespread, and a serious mat¬ 
ter. Without it there is apt to 
be deterioration of the herd; 
with it, deterioration of the 
pocketbook. In the long run 
shall we not settle this question 
by home-growing more coarse 
protein crops? In upper Her¬ 
kimer County, with 25 cows and 
only three horses, five or six 
acres of oats and peas, hayed or 
siloed, would be more to the pur¬ 
pose than so many acres of 
straight oats thrashed. Upper 
Herkimer County should be 
able to raise such protein crops 
as peas and vetches if it can¬ 
not raise Red clover, and we 
have no evidence here that it 
cannot raise Red clover. 1 he 
solution of his problem, in my mind, would be to make 
the hay as sweet and early as possible, and to increase to 
the limit the acreage of coarse protein crops. If he 
buys grain, his money would seem to be better spent 
for a protein feed like bran, gluten, or linseed meal 
than for molasses, which is a carbohydrate like his hay. 
Cotton-seed meal is another good protein feed, but 
rather too constipating to combine with a hay diet. 
Connecticut. E - c - birge. 
What Mr. Morse Would Do. 
T must say that it seems strange to me that these farm¬ 
ers cannot raise corn for the silo. Herkimer County is 
only 50 miles northwest from here, and some years I have 
had Learning corn ripe enough for seed. Even if the corn 
will not develop ears, the stalks are worth raising U> pro¬ 
duce succulent food for Winter, and some contend that 
corn grown thickly and only allowed to grow stalk and 
foliage is worth as much as the heavier stalk with the 
ears, because the leaves contain more protein, which 
is the more expensive element of cow food. But to 
consider the question as it is asked,, the writer says he 
