On page 260 of Boussingault’s Rural Economy (Law’s translation) are some very urgent warnings against the frequent turning of dung heaps. His objection, Mr. Law thinks, should be limited to more than three turnings of the dung. But this objection and limitation apply to horse manure, the more active fermentation of which rapidly develops the highly volatile salt known as carbonate of ammonia. There can hardly be too thorough a working together of cow-manure, with its organic absorbents, particularly when the working is accompanied by the compacting tread of animals.
The pile should be watched, and the slightest perception of the pungent ammoniacal odor should be the signal for more absorbents, bearing in mind that all organic matter thus composted becomes a valuable fertilizer, and remembering that nothing should be left undone to increase to the greatest extent possible the source of your anticipated blessings.
The manure bin should, of course, be so covered as to exclude rain and sunshine.
If the liquid or dilute method be employed, in place of the manure bin in the plan, it will be necessary to construct an underground cemented tank or cistern, say of a depth of eight feet and diameter of six to seven feet at the bottom. This tank must be provided with a pump for raising the fluid, the tube of which should terminate in a strainer at about twelve inches from the bottom of the tank. An opening should be left in the top of the cistern for inspection, and for the insertion of a proper implement to stir the sediment. The pump should rise sufficiently high to permit the pumping of the fluid directly into a tank on wheels used for the distribution thereof in the fields. A condemned watering cart, which could probably be purchased cheaply, would be an excellent instrument for this distribution. Sulphate of iron, green vitriol, should be freely used to change the carbonate of ammonia into the sulphate, thereby obtaining a fixed, instead of a highly volatile salt.
KEEPING A COW IN A VILLAGE STABLE.
BY ORANGE JUDD, FLUSHING, L. I.
A business man of New York, living in one of the neighboring villages, being troubled to get good milk for young children in his family, took our advice the latter part of the winter and, so to speak, went into the dairy business on his own account. The result will be instructive to tens of thousands of families in cities and villages. He has no pasture grounds, the only convenience being a roomy stall in a carriage barn, with opportunity for the cow to sun herself and take limited exercise in a small area, say fifteen by twenty feet, at the side of the barn, and this was seldom used. The stall is kept clean and neat, with fresh straw litter, and the cow has remained in excellent health and vigor. Chewing her cud and manufacturing milk seem to give all the exercise needed. Her feed has been bale hay, cut in a small hay-cutter, and mixed wet with corn-meal, bran, and shorts, with some uncooked potato parings, cabbage leaves, left over rice, oatmeal, etc., from the kitchen.
A laborer is paid one dollar a week to milk and feed and brush her night and morning, and take care of the stable, and he is allowed any excess of milk she gives over twelve quarts a day. He prepares a mess for her noon feed, which is given by one of the boys at school when he comes home to lunch. The cow is a grade, probably three-fourths Jersey and one-fourth common blood. Her milk is rich, yields abundant cream, and, as the owner’s family say, “Is worth fully double any milk we ever got from the best milk dealers.” One neighboring family gladly takes six quarts a day at seven cents a quart, and would willingly pay much more if it were asked, and other families would be happy to get some of it at ten cents a quart; but six quarts are kept for home use, and it is valued far above seven cents a quart, and worth more than that amount in the saving of butter in cooking, making puddings, etc. So it is a very low estimate to call the whole milk worth seven cents a quart. No one could deprive our business friend or his family of their good, home produced milk, if it cost ten or twelve cents a quart. An accurate account is kept of the feed; the man in charge orders at the feed store anything he desires for the cow, and it is all down on a “pass-book.” Here are the figures for one hundred days past: