1874.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
453 
price of corn, it will pay well. “ I don’t think 
it pays at all,” said the Deacon, “ to feed hogs 
corn at present prices.”—I think it does, but 
that is not what I meant. That is another 
question. What we are talking about now, is 
whether in case you feed pigs at all, it will pay 
to cook the food for them. It certainly will 
not pay to throw bushels of corn into a pen of 
coarse, ill-bred, ravenous hogs, and let them 
pass one-third or one-half of it undigested. A 
good appetite is a good thing. A good digestion 
is better—what we want in a pig is both. 
“You have said this same thing over and 
over again,” said the Deacon, “ for the last 8 
or 9 years.”—Yes, and I mean to say it again 
and again. It must be understood before we 
shall make any real improvement in breeding 
pigs. Mr. Lawes has recently advocated the 
same doctrine, and we may hope that it will at¬ 
tract more attention. “ From the results of nu¬ 
merous experiments made at Rothamstead,” 
says Mr. Lawes, “ it may be assumed that on 
the average, a pig weighing 100 lbs. will, if sup¬ 
plied with as much barley-meal as he will eat, 
consume 500 lbs. of it, and double his weight— 
that is, increase from 100 lbs. to 200 lbs. live 
weight in 16 or 17 weeks. The following table 
shows the amount of dry or solid constituents 
in the 500 lbs. of barley-meal, and how they 
will be disposed of in the case supposed: 
500 LBS. BARLEY-MEAL PRODUCE 100 LBS. INCREASE AND 
SUPPLY. 
'I 
4 
In 100 
lbs. of 
increase 
1 In ma¬ 
nure. 
In respi¬ 
ration, 
etc. 
ft 
ft 
ft 
Nitrogenous substance.. 
52 
7.0 
Non-nitrogenous substance... 
357 
66.0 
Mineral matter.... 
11 
0.8 
10.2 
Total dry substance. 
420 
73.8 
70.0 
276.2 
“From the figures in the table,” continues 
Mr. Lawes, “ we learn that of the 420 lbs. of 
dry or solid substance which the 500 lbs. of bar- 
ley-meal contain, about 74 are stored up in the 
100 lbs. of increase in live weight, about 70 are 
removed in the manure, and 276, or nearly two- 
thirds of the whole, are given off into the at¬ 
mosphere by respiration and perspiration ”— 
that is to say, we expended this amount in the 
mere sustenance of the living meat and manure¬ 
making machine, during the 16 or 17 weeks 
required to produce the 100 lbs. of increase. 
“But now,” says Mr. Lawes, “letus suppose 
that, instead of allowing the pig to have as 
much barley-meal as he will eat, we make the 
500 lbs. of meal last many more weeks. The 
result would be that the animal would appro¬ 
priate a correspondingly larger proportion of 
the food for the purposes of respiration and 
perspiration, and a correspondingly less propor¬ 
tion in the production of increase. In other 
words, if the 500 lbs. of barley-meal be dis¬ 
tributed over a longer period of time, it will 
give less increase in live weight, and a larger 
proportion of it will be employed in the mere 
maintenance of the life of the animal. ’ In¬ 
deed, if the period of consumption of the 500 
lbs. of meal be sufficiently extended, the result 
will be that no increase whatever will be pro¬ 
duced, and that the whole of the food, except 
the portion obtained as manure, will be expend¬ 
ed in the mere maintenance of the life of the 
animal.” 
“ Why this,” said the Deacon, “is precisely 
your old doctrine of the advantage of having 
animals that are ‘great eaters’—a doctrine 
which is hard to swallow when corn-meal is 
$2 per 100 lbs.”—“ No Deacon,” I replied, “Mr. 
Lawes does not go as far as that. He does not 
say, as I do, that there is an advantage in hav¬ 
ing an animal that will eat, digest, and assimi¬ 
late a large amount of food in a given time. 
He says there is a great loss in not giving a fat¬ 
tening pig all the food he will eat, digest, and 
assimilate. I push the doctrine a step further, 
and aim not merely to give the pigs all they 
will eat, but endeavor to raise a breed of pigs 
that will eat, digest, and assimilate a larger 
amount of food, at the same time aiming to 
breed them of a quiet disposition, and with the 
least possible proportion of offal. I wrote my 
little book on the pig for the purpose of advo¬ 
cating this doctrine. If true of pigs, it is true 
of other domestic animals. I am very glad that 
Mr. Lawes has called attention to this subject. 
It is time we aimed to breed pigs that do not 
require two-thirds of all the food they can eat 
to ‘ run the machine.’ ” 
Every year I am aiming to get less and less 
fall work. We are busier in October than any 
other month in the year. And it is work that 
must be done. The days are short, the weather 
uncertain, and wages high. We greatly need 
a good potato-digger, and a corn-liusking ma¬ 
chine. So far as I have seen, the machines 
now made for husking are too small and too 
slow. Farmers do not want more machines 
than they have now. We want to keep fewer 
machines of our own, and hire the work done 
by skillful men, who keep a large steam-engine 
and the necessary machinery for doing the 
work up rapidly. 
“ Your Late Rose potatoes,” said the Deacon, 
“ helped you forward with your fall work more 
than all the machines you are likely to get for 
some time.” The Deacon is right. I have 
hitherto planted the Peachblow. It has been 
our surest and best winter variety. But it runs 
over the ground almost as bad as Compton’s 
Surprise, and is hard to dig. Besides it is very 
late, and often keeps on growing until Novem¬ 
ber. Two years ago, last spring, Mr. E. L. 
Coy sent me a peck of his Late Rose potatoes. 
I planted them in the mangel lot, where they 
had plenty of manure, and I had a great yield. 
The next year (1873) I planted half an acre or 
more side by side with Early Rose and White 
and Red Peachblows. The Late Rose were by 
far the best crop. I put over 100 bushels in 
the cellar, and thought nothing more about 
them until February, when, happening to be at 
New York, I called on B. K. Bliss, and had a 
talk about the new varieties of potatoes. I 
told him that I thought the Late Rose a de¬ 
cided acquisition.—“ There are three or four 
kinds of Late Rose,” he said. “ Where did 
you get your’s from ? ”—I told him Mr. Coy 
made me a present of a peck.—“ Oh! ” said he, 
“you got it from headquarters. Mr. Coy 
originated the variety, and you ought to take 
care of it.”—On coming home, I found that 
these potatoes, being so large and fine, were 
decidedly popular in the kitchen, and that we 
had been eating them all winter. After that I 
made them eat Peachblows, and we planted 
this spring all the Late Rose we had left. As 
the Deacon says, this fact helped me greatly 
with my fall work. As soon as we were 
through digging the Early Rose, we commenced 
on the Late Rose, and were all through digging 
them two or three weeks before the Peach¬ 
blows were ready. This is a great advantage. 
I think the Late Rose will stand high ma¬ 
nuring. And as the “ bug ” is upon us, this is 
what we want. We shall have to go over our 
potato field two or three times next year with 
Paris green. It will cost no more to go over an 
acre of potatoes that will yield 300 bushels than 
over an acre that will yield only 100 bushels. 
We should get our manure ready for pota¬ 
toes this winter. I have commenced my pile 
already, and it is fermenting nicely, and will 
keep on fermenting all winter. But it is not 
yet too late to start a heap. All there is about 
it is simply to wheel the manure into a heap in 
some central position, and every day, or as 
often as the stables and yards are cleaned out, 
wheel the manure to the heap and spread it on 
top , instead of scattering it over a large surface. 
If the manure does not ferment, it is prob¬ 
ably because it is too poor. The droppings 
from the hen-house, if scattered upon the heap 
and covered up, will help it. When you 
kill pigs, save the blood and pour it on the 
heap. Any animal matter will be good. If 
the heap is dry and cold, the hot water, hair, 
etc., you have left after scalding the pigs, can 
be poured on the heap to advantage. In my 
case, the horse stable is separate from the rest 
of the buildings. We throw the horse litter 
into an empty stall, where it will keep dry. 
Every week or so we put this horse litter in a 
cart and draw it to the pig-pens. Here it stays 
until it gets saturated with the rich liquid from 
the pigs, and is then wheeled to the heap. 
There is no difficulty about getting such ma¬ 
nure to ferment. It will be in prime condition 
for potatoes in the spring. 
“ I saw somewhere,” said the Squire, “ a plan 
of making rich manure, by putting plenty of 
straw in the stable and not cleaning it out un¬ 
til the spring.”—That is the plan they call 
“ stall-feeding ” in England. The animal is 
put in a loose box and kept well littered. He 
moves about and keeps the bed level and solid. 
But in a cow stable, where the cows are tied 
up, you can not adopt this plan. In a large 
shed, or basement, where the animals run loose, 
the plan is a good one—and nearly all our 
farmers adopt it. The only objection to it is 
that the manure is not sufficiently rotted for 
spring crops. John Johnston adopts this plan, 
but he piles his manure in the spring and keeps 
it over the summer, to be used as a top-dress¬ 
ing on grass in the fall. The proper manage¬ 
ment of manure depends greatly on circum¬ 
stances. The first point is to save all the liquid. 
The next is to keep the animals clean and com¬ 
fortable, and the atmosphere of the stables 
pure. The next is to ferment the manure as 
much as possible without loss. If this can not 
be done to advantage, give it up. It is only a 
loss of time.. It is using the manure in the fall 
instead of the spring; or using it in the green 
state for corn. The latter plan is the one gen¬ 
erally adopted by the Deacon. I do not like 
It. I think, in my circumstances, my plan of 
fermenting the manure all winter in a heap, 
and turning it if necessary towards spring, is 
better than plowing under this long, strawy 
manure. It gives me manure in good condi¬ 
tion for potatoes or mangels. But if the 
Deacon’s plan is the only one you can adopt, 
you may console yourself with the reflection 
that there is no loss from fermentation or 
leaching. You get all the virtue there is in it, 
but you will have to wait some years before 
you get the full effect of the manure. 
Beef from Colorado. —Dressed beef is 
now shipped in refrigerator cars from Denver, 
Colorado, to the New r York market. Two cars 
recently arrived, which contained the carcasses 
of 34 beeves, 50 calves, 199 sheep and 20 ante- 
