MULE RAISING IN VERMONT. 
A Profitable Brood Mare. 
Mule raising in this section of Vermont, you might 
say, is a new enterprise. Only five or six years since 
one of our farmers, R. L. Hemenway, went to Mis¬ 
souri and purchased a jack, and a few ventured to 
raise mules, but as time goes on more are becoming 
convinced that mule teams are the right thing for the 
farmer. The picture at Fig. 305 shows four mules 
and their dam, a well-bred Morgan. Their ages are 
weanling, one. two and three years. This picture was 
taken in December, 1909, when the thermometer regis¬ 
tered six below zero. I do not see but mules endure 
the cold as well as the horse. I now have another, 
about a month old. making five in all. I have had 
several good offers for the older ones, but I want 
those for my own use on the farm, and the others I 
can dispose of as they 
mature. My four-year- 
old stands 15-3, and 
weighs 1100 pounds. 
Living in the West for 
a good many years, where 
mules were raised and 
used to a great extent, 
and owning some my¬ 
self, I know more about 
them than those not hav¬ 
ing any experience. I 
would rather handle and 
break them than horses. 
I begin breaking them 
to halter when they are a 
few days old, the same 
as I do a horse. Al¬ 
though mules have a 
bad reputation, if kindly 
treated and carefully 
trained, I believe they 
are as dependable under 
any and all conditions as 
the horse. The first ques¬ 
tion is, “Do they kick?” 
I have two or three 
neighbors who, when I 
meet them on the road 
with my teams, ask if 
they have kicked me yet. 
The mule is surely more 
profitable than the horse. 
In the first place they 
mature earlier, and it 
takes less to keep them. 
I work my mules on the 
plow the Fall they are 
two years old. where a 
horse should be four years old to do the same work. 
The farmers will also find that a mule team will do 
as much work on less feed than horses. You feed a 
mule six to eight quarts of corn a day and he will do 
as much work as a horse that gets from 12 to 16 
quarts of cracked corn and oats. Just figure that out 
and see how much more it costs to keep the horse. 
The mule is less liable to diseases or blemishes, so if 
you raise or own a good mule team, barring accidents, 
they are good for 50 years. Writing for papers is out 
of my line, but I wanted to tell the farmers there is 
more money in raising mules than any other stock. 
Addison Co.. Vt. j. c. moore. 
THE BOSTON MILK WAR. 
Owing to the gravity of the situation developed by 
the holding back of milk from the Boston market by 
thousands of producers in the recent milk war, a joint 
special committee of the Legislature was appointed to 
investigate the “production, transportation and market¬ 
ing of milk in Massachusetts,” and a better under¬ 
standing of the entire matter and the causes leading 
to the strike cannot be had than by quoting direct, 
testimony given before this committee by representa¬ 
tive farmers and dairymen. Mr. Albner, of Concord, 
in the course of his argument, offered this extract from 
the report of a U. S. dairy inspector, which is entitled 
(and also well explains) “Handling Milk at Boston.” 
From 80 to 85 per cent of the milk consumed in Greater 
Boston is transported by railroad, and the remainder in 
wagons. In local nomenclature “car milk” and “wagon 
milk” are common terms for these two classes of milk. 
Of the railroad milk, nearly all is handled by live whole¬ 
sale houses that do business on a plan that seems to be 
peculiar to Boston. These large wholesalers are locally 
known as contractors. They contract for and buy the 
milk in the country, lease railroad milk cars, manage the 
transportation to the city, and sell most of their supplies 
to peddlers for distribution at retail. Originally the con¬ 
tractors did an exclusively wholesale business, hut of late 
years there has been a growing tendency to branch out 
into the retail business. A part of this business was 
forced upon them by their being obliged to take retail 
routes on account of debts for milk due them by the ped¬ 
dlers: lfut recently this retailing of milk has seemed to 
be more of a deliberative policy. A few large retailers 
buy their supplies direct from the farmers, but the greater 
portion of the business of buying and receiving is done by 
the contractors. These five large wholesale concerns, 
though technically entirely separate, have a common 
understanding and practice in many details of the busi¬ 
ness. One person is at the head of three of the corpora¬ 
tions, and it may be said that three officials could prae : 
tieally determine any question of policy for the whole 
business were they so disposed. 
The can of milk here holds quarts. J. W. San¬ 
born. of Gilmanton, N. H., appeared before the com¬ 
mittee and testified as follows: 
“Perhaps it may not be inappropriate for me to 
make a single personal explanation. Until 1S79 I 
was a large farmer in New Hampshire, when I be¬ 
came associated with the New Hampshire Agricultural 
College, then the Missouri Agricultural College, as an 
officer, and finally as chief officer in the Utah State 
College. During all this time I had immediate charge 
of the farm work and conducted very wide and com¬ 
plete experiments in animal nutrition, in swine feed¬ 
ing, cattle feeding, horse feeding, cow feeding, tens of 
thousands of times, so that I cover perhaps as volum¬ 
inous data as anybody in the country. I don't men¬ 
tion this because I have any pride in the matter, but 
I think it is due to the committee to know how far I 
may be able to represent the proposition I am here to 
present. At the present time I will say 1 am a farmer 
in Central New Hampshire, 15 miles from the rail¬ 
roads, perhaps farming as extensively as anyone in 
New Hampshire. It is earning my bread and butter, 
and I am situated so that I have to earn my bread 
and butter out of the soil, so that I don’t expect any 
recognition for my title 
except so far as I have 
been associated with the 
subject of animal nu¬ 
trition. I am keeping 
150 cows and 100 young 
things, growing up, and 
have a lot of men, and 
I have to make the bal¬ 
ance sheets meet, so that 
I have to study very ac¬ 
curately the cost of pro¬ 
duction. That gives you, 
of course, the possession 
of such facts as will en¬ 
able you to weigh what¬ 
ever testimony I can give 
for what it is worth. 
“I notice we are to con¬ 
fine ourselves not to ad¬ 
vice or suggestions, but to 
direct data. 1 have made 
a few notes as to the cost 
of milk production in 
which you are now in¬ 
terested. I may say that 
three or four years ago 
I constructed a new barn 
without any of the tinsel 
that men of wealth apply, 
because 1 have not it. It 
is simply a practical barn 
wholly, and that barn 
cost me $60, as near as 
1 can judge, per capita 
per cow. That would 
mean at six per cent in¬ 
terest, insurance, keeping 
the barn in repair, shing¬ 
ling, wear and tear an annual cost per cow of 10 per 
cent interest. I think a very careful estimate will be 
$60 that the cows to day will cost; a good cow cannot 
be had under $60 unless you get a trade. You cannot 
buy them in our community for less than that, and I 
can sell them readily for more money, the inter¬ 
est on that money, and the risk of abortions, 
etc., and then the depreciation of the cow in four 
or five years, the natural business life of the cow, 
will make her annual cost not less than $11, and 
[ will say that every figure I give is conservative. The 
care of a cow in an ordinary herd I have placed at $10. 
There is a proposition that requires individual judg¬ 
ment as to cost. The average milk herd of New 
Hampshire will not be in twenty cows. The great 
majority of them is 10 and 15. But supposing a man 
has the care of 20 cows at $1.20 or $1.35 or $1.30 a day. 
I don’t see how the cow can be taken care of at $10 
a cow; but I have placed the sum at $10 a cow, and 
A VERMONT MORGAN MARE AND HER FOUR MULE COLTS. Fig. 305. 
