This Columbia Jersey Cattle Company organized with a capital stock of $20,000, paid a dividend of 14 per cent or over per annum, and the stock was retired at par with all debts paid; one of the most successful of all Jersey cattle enterprises I was ever in. I think the last year, with about thirty working cows and the dairy receipts of thirty-six hundred dollars and over and the sales of calves and cattle from the herd, with the herd products and heifers added, was something over ten thousand dollars.
It was then located at Indian Camp Springs, about three miles from Columbia and an ideal place for a spring-house, the spring being about fifty nine feet above the spring-house and coming to the spring-house through a four inch pipe, but the water had to be cut off so that it would run slowly into the spring-house, and when we wanted to work the butter in the churn it would be turned on into the hose and the butter thoroughly washed.
Young breeders cannot adopt a better formula for feed than the one I have suggested, which is cheap also in the long run, for it is a farm product and it is not necessary to buy on the market, but it can be produced on the farm. Besides this, no cow will stand commercial feed as she will this corn and oats in equal parts. It is nearer suited to nature and she can stand this feed longer without injury than any commercial food. When I say corn and oats in equal parts I mean bushel for bushel mixed and ground together. If any one will think a minute there is nothing deleterious in this food. You can get it absolutely pure, whereas if you go to market to buy bran to feed the cattle on you do not know what you are getting, sometimes the sweeping of the mill floor and any old waste the miller is pleased to throw off. The Jersey breeder ought essentially to be a farmer and raise on his own farm what his herd consumes and thus market the products of the farm.
In The Open
(Note.—Under this head communications are invited from the open—of gun, dog and rod—stories of hunting, fishing, traveling, etc.—Ed.)
A PRAIRIE CHICKEN HUNT IN NORTH DAKOTA.
By Trotwood.
Every citizen of this great republic should travel over his own country. He will be amazed at its greatness, and his prejudices and local conceits, if he have any breadth at all, will grow fewer the further he goes, and learns that the world cares nothing for the petty environments and embroilments of his own bailiwick.
The most attractive country in the Northwest is the great prairies of the Dakotas. I thought I had some idea of their immensity, of their greatness, until for one solid day and night I raced across them by fast express, and saw by day the pillar of their cloud of smokestacks—for it was harvest time—on each side, as far as the boundless horizon, and each cloud a thresher from whose funnel poured the wheat of the nation.