Vol. LXVI. No. 3013. NEW YORK, OCTOBER 26, 1907. weekly, m.ooper year. 
A ONE-ACRE DAIRY FARM . 
Cows Milked By Electricity. 
What would you think of keeping 32 cows on less 
than one acre? 
No other land? 
No other land! No pasture or silo, no cultivated 
ground, raising no calves, keeping no bull, 
buying all hay and grain and paying cash 
to have the manure hauled away! 
Some of you dairymen back on the hills, 
with your cheap pasture land and your si¬ 
los, or some of you soiling dairymen 
^growing three or four crops on the same 
land, will call such a person a phantom— 
or if he lives, a crazy man. Yet he is here 
—right in this city doing the business and 
making money at it. 
When the great electrical show was 
started in this city the first week in' Oc¬ 
tober, a novelty was wanted. They hit upon 
the scheme of running a milking machine 
by electric power, with real cows milked in 
sight of the crowd. Shimmel’s dairy at 
Maspeth was asked to provide the cows, 
so Mr. Shimmel sent over two grade Short¬ 
horns and two grade Holsteins, and went 
along himself to see that they got a square 
deal. The cows stood on a raised plat¬ 
form, and while the machine was pumping 
out the milk, a great crowd gathered. So 
much has been said about pure milk lately 
that city people begin to see that it is some¬ 
thing more than a white liquid to pour in¬ 
to their coffee. They begin to see that it 
doesn’t grow on trees or come out of a 
well, but out of a cow, and thus just as 
much a food as beefsteak from a cow’s 
back. Mr. Shimmel said he would pro¬ 
duce milk so pure that it might be used 
without straining. He did, and the milk 
from these four cows was sold by the glass 
to people who saw the milking, at an aver¬ 
age of about $15 a night! When a cow 
earns $3.75 a day she beats most skilled 
mechanics! 
Five years ago Mr. A. Shimmel was a 
market gardener on a small piece of land. 
He thought he saw an opening on the sun¬ 
ny side of the dairy business. He bought 
four cows, and in the first seven days he 
sold 12 quarts of milk. Now, on less than 
an acre, he is milking 32 cows, which give 
on the average about 360 quarts per day. 
His old customers pay eight cents a quart; 
no new ones are taken now for less than 
10 cents. The milk is bottled, and every¬ 
thing about the place is as clean as it can 
be made. The plant is now worth about 
$20,000, and Mr. Shimmel is planning an¬ 
other barn—this time of concrete and meral. 
Absolutely nothing is grown for stock 
food. Clover hay is bought by the carload. 
Mr. Shimmel wants to buy Alfalfa at a fair 
price. He bought a carload of baled Al¬ 
falfa once, but it turned out to be mostly 
hard stems with few if any leaves. But 
just think of it, you dairymen with your 
silos and clover fields. Here is a man pay¬ 
ing $22 a ton for baled hay and turning it 
into profitable milk. It’s in the market. It 
shows you what the various middlemen are 
taking out of the price of a quart before 
they hand what’s left to you. Mr. Shimmel 
is paying all the middleman’s toll on the 
grain and hay, but getting the full price 
for the finished product. 
For grain Mr. Shimmel buys fine wheat middlings, 
cornmeal, wheat bran, oil meal and wet grains from a 
brewery. He lives a few blocks from this brewery, 
and thus gets the grains warm and sweet from the vat 
at a low figure. They have no chance to become sour 
or stale and, very likely, in this condition, prove a fair 
substitute for silage. The New York Board of Health 
THE RAW MATERIAL FOR STOVE COMFORT. Fig. 386 
THE FACTORY WELL UNDER WAY. Fig. 387. 
has selected Mr. Shimmel’s place as pretty near a model 
of its kind, so it is safe to say that they approve his 
feeding. The oil meal is used largely as a laxative 
whenever the cattle need it. 
I have said that no calves are raised and no bull kept 
on this dairy. The cows are mere boarders—not mem¬ 
bers of the family. It doesn’t matter whether their 
“papers fit” or not so long as they put 
money in the pail. They are bought when 
fresh at the stock yards and sold for beef 
when they fail to give enough milk. Mr. 
Shimmel tries to pick out large, roomy 
grade cows as near to the true dairy type as 
he can get. Those at the show looked like 
about three-fourths grade Flolstein and 
Shorthorn. They give a good flow of milk, 
which will average about four per cent fat. 
The average cost of these cows at the 
yards is $60 to $65. When one cow fails 
another is bought in her place, and under 
this system the cows are kept six months 
to a year. Mr. Shimmel says that the 
average difference between the price of the 
new cow for milk and the old cow for 
beef is about $25. Under this system if he 
can get from 1,500 to 2,000 quarts of milk 
from a cow, is evidently a great profit on 
the cow. The work of caring for the cat¬ 
tle is made easy by labor-saving devices. 
The cows are milked by machinery, the feed 
carried to them and the manure taken by 
carriers to a pit from which it is hauled by 
a farmer who is paid for taking it. I 
shall speak of these methods in describing 
the dairy. Now we need only discuss 
the main facts and try to think what it in¬ 
dicates in the future of dairying. The Al¬ 
falfa man, the silo man, the cheap pasture 
man, the soiling man, will argue against 
the idea of buying every ounce of hay and 
grain. The man who buys purebred bulls 
and selects his best cows for breeders will 
punch holes all through this plan of buy¬ 
ing cattle of unknown breeding on their 
shape alone. Yet it is doubtful if anyone 
of them can match M'r. Shimmel’s profit 
per cow. If they follow his plans they 
might go to the poorhouse. If he followed 
their advice he might join them there! 
Thus dairying, like everything else, is pret¬ 
ty much dependent on conditions and men 
with the market price and cost of getting 
to market deciding it. Perhaps this dairy 
shows something of what the milking ma¬ 
chine will do in the near future by bringing 
the cows closer to the consumer. 
h. w. c. 
SCALECIDE AND THE SCALE. 
I note on page 699 a letter from George 
T. Powell in regard to the use of Scalecide, 
and also some caustic criticisms on the 
work of the experiment stations and the 
Department of Agriculture. While the 
work of inspection in the nursery is of such 
magnitude that it may be a physical impos¬ 
sibility to inspect every tree, I have found 
in my experience that the work of the in¬ 
spectors in our district has been very faith¬ 
ful and efficient. I also think it unfair to 
the stations to give them such a generous 
calling-down for no* advising the use of 
the oils until it has been demonstrated be¬ 
yond a doubt that they are harmless. That 
oil, i. e., Scalecide, may be used with 
safety I am inclined to believe, always 
