Milch Cows and Dairy Farming / Comprising the Breeds, Breeding, and Management, in Health and Disease, of Dairy and Other Stock, the Selection of Milch Cows, with a Full Explanation of Guenon's Method; The Culture of Forage Plants, and the Production of Milk, Butter, and Cheese: Embodying the Most Recent Improvements, and Adapted to Farming in the United States and British Provinces. With a Treatise upon the Dairy Husbandry of Holland; To Which Is Added Horsfall's System of Dairy Management

by Charles Louis Flint

This cow-room may be furnished with a thermometer, clock, etc., and should always be well ventilated by sliding windows, which at the same time admit the light.

Fig. 57a.

[Fig. 57a] is a transverse section of the cow-room, [Fig. 56a], a being a walk behind the cows, five feet wide; b, dung-pit; c, cattle-stand; d, feeding-trough, with a bottom on a level with the platform where the cattle stand; k, open area, forty-three feet by fifty-six.

The story above the cow-room, [Fig. 58a], is one hundred feet by forty-two, the bays for hay, ten on each side, being ten feet front and fifteen feet deep, and the open space, p, for the entrance of wagons, carts, etc., twelve feet wide. b, hay-scales. c, scale-beam. m m m m m m, ladders reaching almost to the roof. l l l, &c., scuttle-holes for sending vegetables direct to the bins, l l l, etc., below. a a b b, rooms on the corners for storage. d, scuttles, four of which are used for straw, one for cut hay, and one for muck for the cellar. n and the other small squares are eighteen-feet posts. f, passage to the tool-house, a room one hundred feet long by fifteen wide. o, stairs leading to the scaffold in the roof of the tool-house. i i, benches. g, floor. h, boxes for hoes, shovels, spades, picks, iron bars, old iron, etc. j j j, bins for fruit. k, scuttles to put apples into wagons, etc., in the shed below. One side of this tool-house may be used for ploughs and large implements, hay-rigging, harrows, etc.

Fig. 58a. Room over the cow-room for hay, &c.

Proper ventilation of the cellar and the cow-room avoids the objection that the hay is liable to injury from noxious gases.

The excellent manure-cellar beneath this barn extends only under the cow-room. It has a drive-way through doors on each side. No barn-cellar should be kept shut up tight, even in cold weather. The gases are constantly escaping from the manure, unless held by absorbents, and are liable not only to affect the health of the stock, but to injure the quality of the hay. To prevent this, and yet secure the important advantages of a manure-cellar, the barn may be furnished with good-sized ventilators on the top, for every twenty-five feet of its length, and with wooden tubes leading from the cellar to the top.

There should also be windows on different sides of the cellar, to admit a free circulation of air. With these precautions, together with the use of absorbents in the shape of loam and muck, there will be no danger of rotting the timbers of the barn, or of risking the health of the cattle or the quality of the hay.