392 
WISCONSIN jSTATB AomCULTURAL SOCIETY. 
A writer in a late number of Moore’s Nural Nlew Yorker^ asks 
the question: “What shall we do with our straw?” And he pro¬ 
ceeds to answer it in this wise: My working oxen must be kept in 
good condition for labor; my steers must keep laying on fat and 
flesh for the butcher, and my spring calves and yearlings must be 
kept in the best condition to promote and increase bone, muscle^ 
and tissue. It will be a great loss to feed it to my milch cows or 
sheep; the horses may eat some of it, a part can be used for bed¬ 
ding and thus converted into manure, while the balance can be sold 
to the paper maker at a good price, and the product exchanged for 
more progressed fertilizers for my farm.” And I ask is there not 
plain common sense in his answer to the question, and can a Wis¬ 
consin farmer do better than to follow his example? More depends 
upon the feed of our young heifers to fit them for profit in the dairy 
than many of us are aware of, and it is for the want of this knowl¬ 
edge or this better practice that so many worthless cows are kept 
on our farms. If science and practical experience point out a dif¬ 
ferent mode, it is our duty as intelligent men to follow it. 
Scientists for a long time have known many things about the 
properties of milk, which dairymen have not known nor would have 
known, had not the peculiar circumstances which surround them 
called it out. If the same methods of guess work were pursued 
now in the manufacture of cheese that were in vogue in our mother’s 
or grandmother’s day, this article of food would be a rare luxury^ 
Even at the commencement of the present factory system the notions 
that dairymen entertained of the properties of milk were very vague 
and indistinct; and one of their 7iotions was that portions of the 
state of New York and Ohio would be for all time the only dairy 
region of the United States, and so much was this theory promul¬ 
gated, that even now large portions of Wisconsin cheese go to New 
York markets without any factory brand on the boxes, and the re¬ 
ceivers brand it to suit the whim of the purchaser. That their 
opinions as to the resources of the west were unfounded, may be 
shown from the fact that for the 3 'ear ending June 30, 1875, there 
were shipped and exported from the United States 90,611,057 pounds 
of cheese, and from Canada 23,183,223 pounds, making in all 113,- 
794,280 pounds, and a considerable portion included in the Canada 
exports came from Wisconsin. 
I have taken more of your time with these detailed statements of 
