1906. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
99 
VENTILATION FOR DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 
THE KING SYSTEM EXPLAINED. 
Stable Ventilation in Automatic Stock Feeding. 
An average well-fed man eats daily (breathes) 34 
pounds of air; a horse, 272 pounds; a cow, 224 pounds; 
a pig, 89 pounds; a sheep, 58 pounds and a hen two 
pounds. These are amounts very much greater than 
are required of both drink and solid materials com¬ 
bined. In the case of the cow, about double the weight 
of all other food materials combined are required to 
sustain life and perform the bodily functions. To con¬ 
tain the daily air ration of a man requires a bin eight 
feet on every edge; to hold that for a horse, one 15 
feet; that for a cow, 14 feet; that for a pig, 10 feet; 
that for a sheep, nine feet, and that for a hen, one three 
feet on every edge. If this amount of air had to be 
pumped from the well, as water is drawn, it would re¬ 
quire the pumping each day, for a single average man, 
of some 1,275 full pails such as will carry 21 pounds 
of water; for the horse we would have to pump 10,- 
203 pails; for the cow, 8,412; for the pig, 2,209; for 
the sheep, 2,178; and even for a single hen we should 
be obliged to pump as many as 75 pailfuls! Fortu¬ 
nate is it for man, and more fortunate for his domestic 
animals, that all- have been fashioned to live at the 
bottom of an ocean of air, miles in depth, eternally in 
motion, and so penetrating that he has not yet suc¬ 
ceeded in providing a shelter so close that the currents 
do not sweep through it. A sorry world this would be 
if it had to pump its air from the ground or bail it 
from the streams. And so we say stable ventilation is 
an arrangement for automatically feeding our domes¬ 
tic animals all the pure air they need at times when 
they arc sheltered from the winds, the rain and the 
cold. 
VENTILATION, AUTOMATIC STABLE CLEAN¬ 
ING.—As stable ventilation must be looked upon as a 
method of automatic stock feeding, so, too, in a pre¬ 
eminent degree, is it an arrangement for automatic 
stable cleaning. Because we cannot see, and ordinarily 
do not taste or smell, the wastes of respiration and 
transpiration, the imperative necessity for rapidly 
changing the air of dwellings and stables does not force 
itself upon us. Were it a physical necessity for cows 
continually to stand in the water from which they 
drink, the housing of 40 head together on a floor space 
of some 30 by 60 feet would press the necessity for 
maintaining a strong current of water through the 
stable upon us with irresistible force. But the urgency 
of such conditions could be no greater than is the case 
for stable ventilation; for once breathed air is posi¬ 
tively deadly for further use in respiration unless it 
is largely diluted with that which is pure. Even a 
candle is quickly extinguished when lowered into un¬ 
diluted air direct from the lungs. We have yet no 
. sufficiently exact observations to enable it to be said 
just how great a dilution of the 
once breathed air is necessary for 
health, but from various consider¬ 
ations we have arbitrarily assumed 
that the air of a stable should not 
be polluted with the wastes from the 
lungs and from the skin to an ex¬ 
tent greater than 3.3 per cent. Cer¬ 
tainly drinking water for stock pol¬ 
luted to this extent with the dung 
and urine from the stable could not 
be tolerated. 
If we were to build sealed, air¬ 
tight enclosures which would hold 
the requisite amount of air for 24 
hours, so that the enclosure should 
contain at the end of that time but 
3.3 per cent of of air once breathed, 
that for a single man would re¬ 
quire a room more than 23 feet by 
23 feet with a 23-foot ceiling; that 
for a horse would have to be 47^ 
feet, with a 47-foot ceiling; that for 
a cow 44 feet; that for a pig 32 feet; 
that for a sheep 28 feet, and for a 
single average hen a bedroom 9 by 
9 feet with 9-foot ceiling would con¬ 
tain only the requisite amount. In 
Figs. 40 and 41 these volumes for the 
cow and hen are represented in rela¬ 
tive sizes. From these considerations it must be clear 
that when it is desired to build warm and close en¬ 
closures for large numbers of cattle or poultry some 
provision must be made for the ready ingress and 
egress of air. Good ventilating flues, of sufficient ca¬ 
pacity, must be constructed, which must be so placed 
and have all the essential conditions of structure, ex¬ 
cept that they need not be fireproof, as are possessed by 
chimneys which ensure strong draft. Moreover, there 
must be provision for the free entrance of air at suit¬ 
able places, for unless there can be maintained in¬ 
flowing currents equal to those which are passing out 
the flow must inevitably stop. A jug, even when im¬ 
mersed in water, cannot be filled unless it is so held 
that the air may escape as rapidly as the water enters. 
Wherever, therefore, large numbers of animals are 
housed in closely constructed apartments adequate ven¬ 
tilation must be provided, and when this is done the 
arrangements constitute a system for adequate feed¬ 
ing to the animals the fresh air they need and of 
removing from about them the air which has been pol¬ 
luted by the wastes of respiration and transpiration. 
VENTILATORS AND FRESH AIR INTAKES. 
—It will be clear from what has been said that no 
dimensions sufficiently large are practical in the con- 
CLEMATIS I’ANICULATA ON TANK TOWER. Fig. 42. 
See Ruralisms, Rage 108. 
struction of stable room which will permit a sufficient 
amount of air to be enclosed to meet the needs for 
any considerable length of time, and hence, where 
many animals are brought together, cubic feet of 
space is not the essential. It is cubic feet of air per 
unit of time, passing through the stable, which is the 
all-important consideration. Only so much height of 
ceiling and such horizontal dimensions as will give 
adequate working room for the care of the stock need 
be provided, and in cold climates the higher the stable 
ceiling is above the floor the colder will it be. and for 
cow stables eight to nine feet is an ample height for 
the ordinary feeding purposes. Even for horse stables 
nine feet in the clear is sufficient to prevent any pos¬ 
sibility of a horse hurting himself by throwing his 
head up. In order to meet the needs of 20 cows, hav¬ 
ing an average weight of 1,000 pounds, to secure the 
degree of purity of air which has been assumed, it is 
necessary to provide a ventilating flue whose cross 
section is two square feet, and through which the air 
will move at the mean rate of about three miles per 
hour, or 264 feet per minute. Larger animals should 
be provided with proportionately larger supplies of air. 
Forty cows woidd require a ventilating flue, or flues, 
having an aggregate cross section double that for 20 
cows, while for 60, 80 and 100 cows the ventilating 
flues should have a capacity three, four and five times, 
respectively, that needed for 20. For 10 horses a flue 
20 by 20 inches is required; for 40 sheep one 18 by IS 
inches; and for 20 hogs, one 16 by 16 inches. 
It must be remembered, in providing for a smaller 
number of animals than has been named, it will not 
do to reduce the size of the ventilating flue corre¬ 
sponding amounts, and especially is this true where the 
buildings are low and the ventilating flues will be short, 
because with the small flues the internal friction is rela¬ 
tively great and, where the flues arc short, neither the 
effect of difference in temperature nor of wind suc¬ 
tion across the top is as great, and so, in providing 
flues for poultry houses, or any others which are usually 
correspondingly low, even if the number of animals to 
be cared for is small, the cross section of the flue 
should seldom be much less than three-fourths, to a 
full square foot. In the single story structures, which 
have many windows and doors, especially where they 
are constructed of wood, the openness of structure ; s 
usually so great that it is only where a large number 
of animals are kept together, or where the walls are 
of masonry, with windows and doors tight, that spe¬ 
cial provision for ventilation is important. 
[Prof.jF. H. KING. 
COST OF CROWING POTATOES. 
I will give you the cost of raising two acres of pota¬ 
toes during 1904. The ground has been under cultiva¬ 
tion every year for the last seven years. It has a 
gravelly soil. We used one ton of fertilizer, containing 
4J/2 per cent nitrogen, eight per cent phosphoric acid 
and seven per cent potash. We plowed the ground 
about 10 inches deep. We marked the rows with a 
one-horse plow and tried to get them about eight inches 
deep; then we put the fertilizer in the rows by hand. 
We also dropped the potatoes by hand about 15 inches 
apart in the row, covering them by dragging across the 
rows with a spring-tooth drag. Before the potatoes 
came up we dragged the ground over twice a week, so 
that when they did come up the ground was nice and 
clean. We began spraying them with Bordeaux Mix¬ 
ture when they were about six inches high, and our 
aim was to keep the vines well covered with this mix¬ 
ture all of the time. 
We kept an accurate account of the expense, which 
is as follows: Plowing, $7; dragging, $1.75; marking 
and covering, $1.75; labor for dropping potatoes and 
fertilizer, $13.75; potatoes (21 bushels), $14.75; fer¬ 
tilizer (one ton), $25.50; dragging, $1.75; cultivating 
six times, $4.50; hoeing twice, $5; spraying 10 times, 
$10; digging and delivering potatoes, $50. rent of 
ground, at $10 per acre, $20; total, $155.75. The yield 
was: Large, 650 bushels; small, 35 bushels; seed, 25 
bushels. This may seem like an 
enormous sum for harvesting two 
acres of potatoes, but our ground is 
very stony, which made it slow dig¬ 
ging, as the potatoes were so deep 
in the ground. The potatoes sold 
for 50 cents per bushel. The vines 
kept green long after other pieces of 
potatoes in this vicinity were all 
struck with the blight and the vines 
were dead. w". d. s. 
MR. SKILLMAN ON LIM0ID 
AND KEROSENE. 
On page 17 was a criticism by 
Soper & Son of an article recently 
written by me in regard to spraying. 
I wrote the article at the request of 
The R. N.-Y. It was then, and still 
is, a matter of indifference as to 
what others may think of the matter. 
As regards Prof. Close, I will say, 
that I have been personally ac¬ 
quainted with him for several years; 
and it is not possible for Soper & 
Son to hold him in higher regard 
than the writer docs, or hold in 
greater respect his ability and hon¬ 
esty of purpose. In the article al¬ 
luded to, I think I said I was careful to make a com¬ 
plete combination in making the K.-L. mixture, and 
applied it thoroughly, and as Soper & Son were not 
present, they clearly have no right to question my word 
in the matter, simply because the results I obtained 
were not the same they claimed they reached under 
possibly very different conditions. Unfortunately I 
have had considerable experience forced upon me in 
the spraying business; and while I have had some suc¬ 
cess, I never have wrought a miracle by exterminat¬ 
ing the scale from an infested orchard by a single ap¬ 
plication of any mixture. It is possible that my critics 
may be wiser after they have had more experience in 
the spraying business, and will realize that the day for 
working miracles has long passed. 
New Jersey. wm. h. skillman. 
A LOAD OF PEACHES AT GRAND RAPIDS MARKET. 
