18 
THE RURAL NEW-YOKKEW 
January 2 
COMMON SENSE COW FEEDING. 
[The following sensible advice is 
taken from an address by Dean II. E. 
Cook of the Canton Agricultural School. 
His remarks apply particularly to the 
north country, but the advice is useful 
to all our Eastern dairymen. 1 
IIome-Grown Grain. —Not every far¬ 
mer takes kindly to an increase preferring 
to do what they can themselves and let 
the rest go undone. There seems, how¬ 
ever. no easy way to cut off the grain bill. 
If our farms were up to the limit of pro 
duetion the situation would be different, 
but they are not, and some of the waste 
land, coupled with a small increase in 
yield per acre, would produce all the 
grain feed we require. If we feed our 
cows an average of 10 pounds of grain a 
day for the year, eight pounds of it can 
safely be from a mixture of barley and 
oats, home grown, and the remainder of 
some highly nitrogenous concentrate. 
This eight pounds a day equals 2,0*20 
pounds for the year. As good whole¬ 
some care will give a per acre yield of 
1.500 pounds of grain, this could doubt¬ 
less be grown on two acres. The aver¬ 
age number of cows per farm is about 
20—result, 40 acres of oats and barley. 
These figures of grain fed are probably 
considerably higher than an average, and 
would no doubt cover all the grain fed 
to young stock and horses, not an im¬ 
possibility by any means. 
Cost of Grain. —This grain can be 
grown for a cash outlay of 20 cents per 
bushel, and have the straw gratis. Oat 
straw is fairly good cow feed, if fed in 
small quantities, say four pounds per 
day per cow, together with ripe corn 
silage and clover hay, or more may be 
fed, letting the stock sort it over, and 
the refuse used for bedding. The oat 
straw feed can be fed at a greater profit 
if the Timothy hay is sold ; the market 
is always good for this product, and the 
cash returns from this thus made large 
enough to pay the expense of the small 
amount of nitrogenous feeds used to bal¬ 
ance this home grown ration. The figures 
are two pounds per day per cow at $34 
per ton ; for a 20-cow dairy, 730 pounds 
per cow, 14,000 pounds total, costing 
$248.20. At $12 per ton the farm would 
have to sell 20.7 tons of Timothy hay to 
pay the bill. 
Feeding Corn and Oats. —Does this 
plan disagree with our teaching that corn 
and oats were not a good feed? No, the 
old method of feeding corn and oats and 
Timothy hay was not sound. The ra¬ 
tion was wide, and did not maintain a 
normal condition of the bowels. Ripe 
cornstalks and ears in a succulent condi¬ 
tion from the silo and clover hay will keep 
the animal normal. Oats and a couple of 
pounds of oil or cotton-seed meal or dis¬ 
tillers’ grains, depending upon the ani¬ 
mal, her period of gestation, and cost of 
these feeds, will make a very good bal¬ 
ance. Does this mean if we do not grow 
the oats that we should buy them? No, 
I would not buy oats to feed dairy cows; 
a combination of mill feeds will be cheap¬ 
er. We can, however, grow the oats at 
a profit, but we cannot grow the mill 
feeds. Then why not sell the oats and 
buy the mill feeds? No objection if the 
farmer is a good buyer and seller. The 
chances are, however, against the change. 
He will probably sell the oats at a low 
wholesale price and buy the mill feeds 
back at a retail price, paying the dealer 
a good commission on both ends of the 
trade. Let us therefore begin a cam¬ 
paign of developing our own feed stuffs 
along the lines mentioned, save to our 
north country the great drain now going 
on for Western feeds, improve our soils 
at the same time, and increase the ton¬ 
nage of Timothy hay, which we can sell 
to the city markets, and not decrease our j 
total milk production by a single pound. | 
Changes in Practice. —Dairy farm¬ 
ers in the Eastern States need particu¬ 
larly to emphasize at this time some 
very old-fashioned things; namely, more 
ripe corn silage, more clover hay and 
more oats and barley grain mixed. We 
have departed from the ways of our fa¬ 
thers who had no thought of going South ; 
or West for their seed corn. They raised, J 
to be sure, only a small acreage, one, two 
or three acres, but the crop was care- j 
fully tended. The land was most thor- | 
oughly plowed and fitted, and very often j 
it was Summer-fallowed the year pre- j 
vious to planting. The best manure j 
was saved and the corn manured in the. 
hill. In order to insure a good stand the 
seed had been carefully selected in the 
Fall, nicely braided into “traces” and 
hung away to dry. Did it grow? Why 
of course it grew and ripened. We hai r e 
now learned of better methods of corn 
culture, but we do not all practice them; 
at any rate the introduction of the silo, 
valuable as it is, has demoralized corn 
growing in the North. The old home¬ 
grown seed has largely and in many 
places wholly disappeared. Wo go to a 
hardware store or a seed house some¬ 
where and buy our seed. We have lost 
our knowledge of varieties to a point 
where the most flagrant imposition is 
practiced; varieties that are popular and 
valuable maybe, somewhere in the coun¬ 
try, are exploited by good talkers with 
the result that we grow cornstalks, if we 
grow anything, but very little corn. The 
crop is hard to handle after we get it 
housed, the value is uncertain. 
Improving Varieties and Tillage.— 
Our only hope lies in the return to the 
days of our fathers and the growing 
only of such varieties as we can ripen 
on our farms. In nine cases out of 10 we 
shall find ourselves growing the flint 
corns. Occasionally a farmer with a 
warm soil and much skill and painstak¬ 
ing care, will successfully grow and ma¬ 
ture some if the small early dents, but 
he will probably not materially increase 
the total digestible dry matter from an 
acre. The length of a stalk by no means 
determines its value; more than one- 
half of the value is found in the ear. and 
it is concentrated feed we need, and not 
coarse bulk. It seems to me, therefore, 
a wholesome thing to combine the home¬ 
grown seed and the good tilth of our 
fathers with our present increased acre¬ 
age, and the silo, eliminating the hill 
manuring and hilling, broadcasting all 
manures and fertilizers and giving level 
culture. Such practice would solve the 
corn problem and very materially lessen 
the grain feed bill. Our next problem is 
to insure a crop of clover. Our losses in 
clover growing are enormous. The chief 
cause is lack of available fertility, which 
will be largely supplied by the extra fer¬ 
tility required the year before, if we put 
on enough thoroughly to ripen our corn. 
We should sow not to exceed 1% bush¬ 
els of grain per acre when seeding with 
clover, using always a grain drill, fertil¬ 
izing with 300 to 400 pounds per acre 
of a mixture of 1,500 pounds of acid rock 
and 500 pounds of muriate of potash; 
and then if the weather is exceedingly 
dry, cut the grain before ripening and 
cure it for hay, thereby giving the clover 
plants full possession of the fertility and 
water supply. 
Shoe Boil. —I note your article on 
page 1420 on the treatment for a shoe 
boil. While I do not question that it is 
a cure, it has been my experience that it 
may be cured with milder treatment. 
First procure a shoe-boil pad which goes 
on the ankle and prevents the foot from 
touching the boil. Rathe the part with 
hot water two or three times a day. 
After bathing apply freely camphorated 
oil. If far advanced this will bring it to 
a head, and it often breaks of itself. If 
not a small cut at the softest place \.,11 
let the gathering out. Syringe out well 
with peroxide of hydrogen or collodion. 
This treatment is simple, and I have had 
success on horses I have owned. H. L. 
It's easy 
to gar¬ 
den with 
Iron Age 
mm 
WHEEL HOES 
AND DRILLS 
tools. 
mean a big variety of 
fine vegetables, with 
drudgery - stooping, 
hoeing and hand-weed- 
_ ing cut out. 
In one operation the tool 6hown below will open its own 
furrow, sow in continuous rows or drop in hills, cover the 
seed with loose soil, pack it with roller, and mark 
the next row. A boy can do it. A three min¬ 
utes’ change and you have a wheel hoe culti¬ 
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at $2.50 to $12.00. Straight planting ; 
clean, close, safe cultivation. Ask your 
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BATEMAN 
M’F’G CO. 
Box 212 
Grenloch, N.J. 
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Special discount for early orders. 
STEVENS TANK & TOWER CO. 
AUBURN, MAINE 
t 
COMBINATION SANITARY 
MILK PAIL |v 
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Dept. J Frederick, Md. 
And Keen-sighted Dairymen 
Follow His Example 
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^ TMENPAV. i 
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WreirSnow jj es ]) ee p 
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HANDY BINDER LyVIHtI 
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