•Pie RURAL NEW-YORKER 
625 
Milking Shorthorn as a Good Cow for 
the Farmer 
Some weeks ago Tiie R. N.-Y. discussed 
the milking Shorthorn as a cow that 
filled the needs of the average farmer. 
The writer offers a little of his own ex¬ 
perience with that type of cattle on an 
ordinary farm. The farm comprised two 
lots of land; one lot where the barns and 
house were situated comprised 100 acres; 
the other lot was distant about two miles 
and contained about 50 acres. All the 
land was fairly level. The 50-acre farm 
was used mainly as a pasturage for 
young and dry stock. The farms were run 
by the owner and the writer, who was 
one of the type sometimes despised as a 
green city man. 
The home farm was very well fenced 
and underdrained ; soil dried rather quick¬ 
ly, fairly easy to plow, free from stones. 
We would put in about 10 acres of silo 
corn, six acres Winter wheat, five acres of 
oats and a few acres of oats and barley 
mixed. We manured the wheat field, put¬ 
ting 12G two-horse loads on the land, 
plowed in, cut the wheat, and then seed 
to oats the year following, or put corn 
the year after the wheat. We would seed 
the small grain field down to Alsike 
clover, cut it two years and then repeat 
the same performance. 
We milked at the most nine cows, but 
as a rule seven was the limit, as the 
owner used to say he “would not be tied 
to a cow’s tail,” and so if necessary the 
man could and did often do the milking 
alone. Heifer calves were raised, male 
calves converted into steers and fattened 
for sale at three years old, generally 
reaching from 1,400 to 1.500 lbs. The 
milk was taken to the creamery 114 miles 
away, and we brought back buttermilk, 
which was fed to the hogs, keeping two or 
three brooding sows and selling the lit¬ 
ters when they reached about 200 lbs. 
Also we raised one or two colts each 
year, and a few chickens (about 75). 
All feed used, except a little bran and 
middlings, was grown on the farm. The 
oats were fed to the horses; what we 
called crazy crop (oats and barley) was 
ground for pig feed. Corn was put in 
the silo, and any left was given to the 
cows at the commencement and the ends 
of what was left was saved for the chick¬ 
ens. The cattle were kept in a good sta¬ 
ble; concrete floors, the manure being put 
on the land as soon as possible, the entire 
growing grounds being treated in turn ; no 
fertilizer purchased. This is a slight out¬ 
line of the method followed. What about 
the returns? Well, the owner, up to the 
time I left him, had several thousand dol¬ 
lars invested in tile drains and wire 
fences. I say invested, because tile drain¬ 
age is one of the best investments a farm¬ 
er on the average farm can make. We 
had a barn 72 ft. long, 43 ft. "wide, two 
stories high; a concrete silo, a concrete 
floor and one-storied pigpen, a substan¬ 
tially built brick house. The hired man 
was kept all the year round, and the 
present man on this farm has been there 
since 1913. The work was not tedious; 
you had a holiday when you needed, and, 
altogether, it was far preferable to the 
purely dairy farm. To my mind that 
type of a farm, and run on similar lines, 
would solve a lot of the farmer’s trouble 
today. I might say we weighed the milk 
each milking, and the owner and man 
each milked their own set of cows. This 
led to good-natured rivalry as to which 
cow gave the most milk on the farm. This 
farm was situated in Ontario, Canada, 
where cattle have to be in from October 
to May, and the growing season is not so 
long as it is in many parts. F. K. 
Shorthorn and Jersey Crosses 
I was quite interested in the questions 
of I*. E. W. on page 3<SG, and the answers 
to them by Prof. Minkler. According to 
my experience and observation the cross 
of Jersey and Shorthorn blends as well as 
any cross you can make, unless it is 
Hereford and Shorthorn. Some of the 
best dairy cows I have ever seen were 
half and half Jersey and Shorthorn, big 
rugged cows. When the Jerseys first 
came to Maine the country was full of 
grade Jersey cows, and most of them had 
varying amounts of Shorthorn blood in 
them, and as they were graded up with 
the Jersey blood they became smaller and 
poorer. The past Summer, in looking 
around for some calves to make steers of, 
I ran across a herd of about eight cows 
that were a good type of milking Short¬ 
horn cows, and was informed by the 
owner that they were the fourth genera¬ 
tion from Jersey cows and purebred 
Shorthorn bulls, and in the barn were 
five or six skim-milk calves that were 
about as good as one very often sees. 
If P. E. W>. has some good producing 
cows I should hold on to most of them 
and use a good milking Shorthorn bull. 
The bull calves of the first cross will cer¬ 
tainly be far ahead of straight Jersey, and 
if he has some good-sized Jersey cows he 
will get some heifers that will do him 
some good. If he can get a bull with 
strong individuality in a few years he 
will have a herd of grade Shorthorn cows. 
Maine. c. I. GILBERT. 
A MERCHANT who had been one of the 
passengers on a shipwrecked vessel was 
rescued almost by a miracle. On arriv¬ 
ing at a place from which he could send 
a telegram, he forwarded the following 
despatch to his partner in business: “I 
am saved. Try to break it gently to my 
wife.”—Australasian. 
hich is the best way to buy a 
r Y 
horse, blanket on or blanket off? 
blanket 
off 
3 
When you buy a horse you strip off his blanket and go over him point by point to 
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N P • Sterling Furnace 
. >* 
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THE STERLING RANGE 
The range that bakes a barrel of flour with one hod of coal 
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A Spreader That’s Honest 
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OHIO CULTIVATOR COMPANY, BELLEVUE, OHIO 
Address Dept. 75 
F W ITT PA Y Y CY I T ^ y° u w '^ use ** to secure new and renewal subscriptions to The Rural 
^ New-Yorker. This is the best subscription season. Send for terms. 
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