Keeping one cow: Being the experience of a number of practical writers, in a clear and condensed form, upon the management of a single milch cowVarious
Science
Keeping one cow: Being the experience of a number of practical writers, in a clear and condensed form, upon the management of a single milch cow
Various
Cows; Dairying
The stable for our cow is a shed nine by sixteen, built on the south side
of our carriage and wagon house. One-half of the shed is partitioned off
and enclosed for winter use or stormy weather; the other half of the
shed is open on the south side, and our yard is about sixteen by thirty,
including the shed. We think it would be better to have it larger, but we
get along with it nicely. We find the best way to dispose of her manure
is to have a small cellar underneath the stable, with cemented bottom and
sides, so as to be water tight, the stable to have a tight floor with a
gutter behind the cow to receive the droppings and urine, with a scuttle
or trap door in the gutter to let it all go into the cellar. For bedding,
we use forest leaves, and use them liberally. Where forest leaves cannot
be obtained, any refuse hay or straw will answer, but the cow as well as
the horse should have plenty of good dry bedding. To mix with the urine
and droppings of the cow, we put into the cellar, sea-weed, muck, turf,
slops from the house, and soap suds, or anything we think will make good
compost. We gather up the droppings from the yard and throw them into
the cellar. We keep our yard well laid with forest leaves. If those are
not available, we use the next best thing we can get. In the fall, when
we cart the manure out of the cellar, we gather up what has accumulated
in the yard and put it into the cellar. In this way we save all of the
manure, and in excellent condition. Now, to make it better and save the
labor of pitching it over, we keep a pig where he can have access to
the cellar, and if not disposed to work, we keep him on short feed and
scatter corn in the cellar, so that in order to get it, he will have to
root the whole mass over in good shape.
We cart our manure out in the fall, distributing it over our land as
evenly as possible, and plow it under as deep as we can. We do not sow
anything for next year’s use, as we think we get a better return from our
land to sow early in the spring and continue it through the summer. It
is a mistaken idea, or rather a grave blunder, to undertake to grow good
crops of anything without the liberal use of manures. As soon as our land
will do to work in the spring, we sow our oats, peas, and rye, giving a
top dressing of guano, superphosphates, or bone meal, which we repeat
with each successive sowing, also giving each hill of corn and rows of
beets and turnips a small quantity. We alternate the top dressings, that
is, if we use superphosphate the first sowing, we use ground bone or
guano the second, and vice versa, as we find the continuous use of any
one kind of manure or fertilizer is as injurious as continuous planting
of corn or potatoes, without rotating with something else.
BARRELS FOR KEEPING ROOTS.
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