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

Linseed Meal

is the ground cake of flax-seed, after the oil is pressed out. It is very rich in fat-forming principles, and given to milch cows it increases the quality of butter, and keeps them in condition. Four or five pounds a day are sufficient for cows in milk, and this amount will effect a great saving in the cost of other food, and at the same time make a very rich milk. It is extensively manufactured in this country, and largely exported, but is worthy of more general use here. It must not be fed in too large quantities to milch cows, for it would be liable to give too great a tendency to fat, and thus affect the quantity of milk.

Rape-Cake

possesses much the same qualities. It is the residuum after pressing the oil from rape-seed.

Cotton-seed Meal

is an article of comparatively recent introduction. It is obtained by pressing the seed of the cotton-plant, which extracts the oil, when the cake is crushed or ground into meal, which has been found to be a very valuable article for feeding stock. An analysis has been given on a preceding [page], which shows it to be equal or superior to linseed meal. Practical experiments are needed to establish it. It is prepared chiefly in Providence, R. I., and is for sale in the market at a very reasonable price.

Manures

The Manures used in this country in the culture of the plants mentioned above are mostly such as are made on the farm, consisting chiefly of barn-yard composts of various kinds, with often a large admixture of peat-mud. There are few farms that do not contain substances which, if properly husbanded, would add very greatly to the amount of manure ordinarily made. The best of the concentrated manures, which it is sometimes necessary to use, for want of time and labor to prepare enough on the farm, is, unquestionably, Peruvian guano. The results of this, when properly applied, are well known and reliable, which can hardly be said of any other artificial manure offered for the farmer’s notice. The chief objection to depending on manures made off the farm is, in the first place, their great expense; and in the second, which is equally important, the fact that, though they may be made valuable, and produce at one time the best results, a want of care in the manufacture, or designed fraud, may make them almost worthless, with the impossibility of detecting the imposition, without a chemical analysis, till it becomes too late, and the crop is lost.

It is, therefore, safest to rely mainly upon the home manufacture of manure. The extra expense of soiling cattle, saving and applying the liquid manure, and thus bringing the land to a higher state of cultivation, when it will be capable of keeping more stock, and of furnishing more manure, would offer a surer road to success than a constant outlay for concentrated fertilizers.

The various articles used for top-dressing grass lands, and the management of grass and pasture lands, have been treated of in detail in the work already alluded to, on the Culture of Grasses and Forage Plants.