1252 
lb* RURAL NEW-YORKER 
July 24, l!> 2 (i 
Hand Milking 
versus 
TheDe Laval 
Milker 
Hand milking is not a natural process. 
Neither is it uniform nor regular. 
Even the best hand milker does not milk the same 
every day—nor at every milking. It is a well-known 
fact that even the best hand milkers milk more rapidly 
and energetically at some times than at others, as the 
time of year and a man’s physical condition vary his 
methods of milking. Matters of temperament and 
disposition quickly affect the cow and interfere with 
the secretion of milk. 
The De Laval Milker, on the other hand, is regular, 
uniform, and positive in action at every milking. It milks 
the same at any hour of the day and every day in the 
year. This regularity and the alternating action at 
fixed speed, are agreeable to the cow and promote 
secretion and regular flow of milk. 
The De Laval Milker also saves time and labor. 
In fact, one man with a De Laval Milker can milk 
three times as many cows in a given time as he can 
milk by hand. 
The perfect sanitary features of the De Laval 
Milker are important. All parts that come m contact 
with the milk can be quickly and easily cleaned and 
sterilized. This is especially necessary in marketing 
certified milk. 
Write to nearest De Laval office for Milker 
Catalog, mentioning number of cows milked 
The De Laval Separator Co. 
165 Broadway 29 East Madison Street 61 Beale Street 
New York Chicago San Francisco 
Live Stock Matters 
Conducted By Prof. F. C. Minkler 
Pasturing Alfalfa 
Has any plan been devised for pastur¬ 
ing Alfalfa in suck a way that the crop 
will not be destroyed and fail to come up? 
1 have read a good deal of the value of 
Alfalfa for pigs and cattle, but there are 
several problems in connection with the 
pasturing of it which I would like to 
have solved. I believe it is generally 
agreed that Alfalfa should not be cut 
before the stools begin to grow at the 
base of the plant. If this is so. the cattle 
or hogs should not he allowed to pasture 
it until these stools are formed. They 
will, tlieu have to eat it right down close 
in a short time, or it will get too tough 
and go to seed. After it is eaten down 
close, what can they (the stock) he turned 
into while the Alfalfa is growing up 
again? The Alfalfa cannot be planted 
so that when one pasture is fed down an¬ 
other will be mature, can it? We raise 
tine crops of Alfalfa on this land. 
New York. w. M. T. 
It is generally admitted that Alfalfa 
does not produce the most satisfactory 
pasture for either cattle or swine. In the 
first place, it cannot he safely pastured 
until two years old. and again, owing to 
the fact that the plants grow rapidly and 
very jjink during the early portion of the 
season, it is not easy to got the best re¬ 
sults by pasturing with livestock. Of 
course, the general practice is to clip Al¬ 
falfa fields, even though they are pas¬ 
tured. twice during the season, for the 
purpose of invigorating the plants and 
preventing them from going on to the 
woody and unpalatable stage. However, 
Alfalfa is very well suited for pigs, and 
when supplemented with corn it makes 
excellent food. In this case it is abso¬ 
lutely essential that the area devoted to 
swine pasture he mowed twice during the 
season, say about the middle of June and 
again the first of August. At the New 
Jersey Station we made it a practice to 
rake up this clipping of hay and use it 
in feeding brood sows during the Winter. 
It is also impracticable to pasture an 
Alfalfa field closely, for in so doing you 
will destroy the life and vigor of the 
plants. Hence an Alfalfa field devoted to 
pasture seldom looks like a pastured area, 
and more nearly resembles a meadow. If 
it is intended to devote an A Haifa field 
to pasture, it is recommended that a va¬ 
riety of grass seeds be utilized, for it is 
believed that this practice will insure 
longer life to the pasture, and that sueli 
repeated mowing as we have suggested 
appears to he the best solution of your 
problem. 
Ration for Guernseys 
I am installing at my farm a large silo 
with a capacity of about 104 tons. I am 
expecting to feed through this' about SO 
Guernsey cows. My hay will consist 
largely of Red-top. herd’s grass and a 
large proportion of clover. There is also 
some witch grass mixed in this. Would 
you give a balanced ration for these cows? 
My object is to produce butterfat. as 1 
do not intend to sell the milk. I should 
like to produce as much hut.erfat as pos¬ 
sible. The skim-milk I intend for the 
present to feed to the pigs, letting ij find 
its way hack onto the farm through the 
manure. n. k. m. 
By getting in touch with your feed 
dealer there is little doubt that you can 
arrange for a mixed shipment, including 
some hominy, some wheat bran and some 
gluten, and from these three ingredients 
it would be easy to compound a ration 
that would he well suited for feeding 
Guernsey cows. A mixture of -100 lbs. 
hominy. 400 lbs. gluten and 200 lbs. 
wheat bran would he well suited for sueli 
use. provided you have silage and the 
ronglmge you have identified. 
Whey for Young Pigs 
Will you advise me on feeding pigs six 
weeks old ? I wish _to grow them for 
pork, by November 15. to dress 200 lbs. 
apiece. Is whey made from creamery 
separated skim-milk good to grow pigs? 
New York. G. c. H. 
There is nothing that will produce a 
better supplement for hominy and mid¬ 
dlings in a ration for growing pigs than 
skim-milk or whey. The skim-milk is 
more valuable than the whey, hut the lat¬ 
ter will yield some protein, and very ma¬ 
terially increase the feeding value of hom¬ 
iny and middlings. 1 would suggest that 
the hominy and middlings ho mixed in 
the proportion of seven parts of hominy 
to three parts of middlings, and that they 
be placed before the pigs in the form of 
a thick slop, approaching the consistency 
of buttermilk. Hominy t and middlings 
should he mixed with water rather than 
with skim-milk or whey, for if the latter 
is used the material is more apt to sour 
and more surely take the edge off the 
pigs’ appetite. The whey or skim-milk 
should be fed twice daily, and as a guide 
you could feed 5 or 6 lbs. of the skim- 
milk or whey to each pound of the dry 
feed. In other words, if you feed 2. lbs. 
cf the dry grain mixture per animal per 
day. this could be supplemented, if you 
have an abundance of the whey and milk, 
with from 12 to 15 lbs. of this product. 
If the pig.s have access to forage crops, 
then it would be well to limit the amount 
of grain that they are fed until they 
weigh 125 lbs., and after this stage iii 
their growth and development they should 
be given all the grain and milk by-prod¬ 
ucts that they would clean up with rel¬ 
ish two or three times a day. The rea¬ 
son why one does not keep the pigs on 
full feed throughout, their growing period 
is the fact that grains will he more eco¬ 
nomical where the feeder discriminates 
between a growing period and a fattening 
period, and where the pigs are given an 
opportunity to put on the hulk of their 
flesh during the end of their fattening 
period. 
Sour Milk for Pigs 
Regarding reply by Professor Minkler 
on feeding young pigs, page 1040, after 
;>0 years in feeding pigs on the farm. I 
a"ree with the inquirer, and am of the 
opinion that sour milk is better than 
sweet. h. .t. g. 
Unless I could have milk direct from 
the separator I should prefer sour milk, 
particularly during the Summer season,' 
as it would make it possible to food a 
daily ration of the same consistency and 
the same condition, so far as sweetness 
is concerned. The inquiry related to verv 
small pigs, and here I am sure that 
sweet, milk is more desirable than sour 
milk. ()n the other hand, if one obtains 
the milk from a skimming station and 
feeds it during the Summer months, ho 
has everything to gain bv permitting it 
to sour and feeding it in this manner. 
Experience is the host guide, not only in 
feeding pigs, hut in other farm operations, 
and surely 50 years’ experience ought to 
be convincing. Sour milk makes a fine 
pig feed when supplementing corn. , 
Hog Cholera Problems 
On page 050. regarding inquiry of II. 
I.. S. as to cholera, my opinion is verv 
strongly that there are two badly mistaken 
in that case—the veterinarian and Prof. 
Minkler. Either the disease was not 
cholera (and I do not think it, was) or 
that veterinarian did a poor job of inocu¬ 
lating, or had some poor serum and virus. 
Hogs properly treated with good serum 
and virus will not be “constantly giving 
oil germs of this disease.” In fact, pigs 
from dams that have been immuned fight 
off cholera longer than pigs from dams 
not so immuned. This idea of immuned 
stock throwing of! disease after treatment 
has practically lost the Canadian market 
for American breeders, and it is time that 
it was laid low for all time. It seems to 
bo a hard job for a great many of our 
veterinarians to realize, or admit, that 
there is any disease of hogs outside, of 
cholera ; the sooner they get that idea out 
of their system the better off we will all 
he. If you want trouble, let your ver- 
erinarian treat for cholera when you have 
some other disease in herd; you will have 
it. We should not wait for disease before 
treating. Treat while well, use good 
products, have the work well done, and 
you will not have much trouble. 
Some months ago the question was 
asked as to about what per cent the 
Berkshire could he expected to dress. 
Prof. Minkler answered “about 70 per 
<“iit." In “Feeds and Feeding,” by 
Henry, we find the smallest dressing per 
cent of any breed to be 74.45, and that 
not a Berkshire. 
Michigan. j. w. c. 
It is true that hog cholera is only one 
of tin' many contagious diseases that are 
responsible for losses in swine feeding 
and breeding operations. It is equally 
true that many veterinarians are unable 
to distinguish between hog cholera and 
other infectious diseases, and are often 
found injecting hog cholera serum when 
it should not be injected. I believe the 
manufacturers of biological products and 
some of our leading veterinarians are 
using now what they call a mixed serum 
that is intended to he used in conjunction 
with hog cholera serum, and will control 
outbreaks of septicemia and other allied 
infections with fairly good results. If .T. 
W. C. will give a second thought to his 
argument I think he \\;ill admit that it 
would not be safe to run untreated hogs 
in the same yards or pens with those 
treated with serum and virus. There are 
often carriers of the disease, and in prin¬ 
ciple as well as practice it would not be 
safe to permit untreated hogs to mingle 
with the treated ones. 
Personally I do not favor tin* double 
treatment unless emergency conditions 
prevail. I should use serum alone in 
case there was an outbreak of hog cholera 
and endeavor to control the disease in 
this manner. If I found the premises 
were very badly infected, and the disease 
was generally prevalent in a community, 
then I should resort to the double treat¬ 
ment. and would of course have to con¬ 
tinue it, indefinitely. 
So far as your second question is con¬ 
cerned. one very seldom finds pigs that 
dress as low as 70 per cent: from SO to 
S5 per cent, as you have suggested, is a 
conservative estimate. Of course it de¬ 
pends upon the age and condition of the 
animal. 
