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
After reading of Mr. Peter Henderson’s experiment with Pearl Millet, as
described in the “American Agriculturist,” I determined to make a trial
with it myself. Accordingly, last year, I sowed an area of eighteen
square rods with it, in drills, fourteen inches apart; six rods were set
apart to be cut and dried for fodder. The product of the other twelve
rods was fed green. On the twentieth of June, a month after sowing, the
growth measured about three feet in hight. On this date we commenced
cutting it, and feeding to the cow all she would eat. She ate it with a
greater apparent relish than any other green feed that had been given
her. The cutting was finished on the twenty-fifth of July, on which
day the last cutting measured about four feet in hight. The second
cutting was commenced on the twenty-seventh of July, and finished on the
twenty-second of August, the growth averaging nearly three and a half
feet. The third cutting was commenced on the twenty-third and finished
on the thirty-first of August. The growth was about two feet at the
beginning of the cutting, but not more than ten inches at the finish. The
fourth and last cutting was commenced on the sixteenth, and finished on
the twenty-first of September, after which the ground appeared exhausted,
and no further growth was made. The twelve rods cut and fed green yielded
feed sufficient for seventy-five days, aside from her usual ration of
bran or oil meal, while the product from the six rods, cut and fed dry,
only two cuttings being made, was sufficient to feed her for thirty-four
days, making a total feed for one hundred and nine days, from eighteen
rods of ground; at which rate it would require sixty and one-quarter rods
of ground to furnish forage for a year.
AN EXCELLENT COMPOST.
The only stable manure I use on my crops is that made by my cow. All my
other fertilizers are artificially produced. In the course of the year,
in prosecuting my regular business, I render some two hundred thousand
pounds of tallow. This is all done by boiling it with sulphuric acid.
The acid attacks and decomposes the animal tissue, leaving the rendered
tallow floating on its surface. A part of the dissolved animal tissue,
together with the bones that are sometimes smuggled in with the rough
fat, settles to the bottom of the tanks, and a part remains dissolved
in the acid. This spent acid, together with the deposit in the bottom
of the tanks, is the source of all my nitrogen, except what may be in
the manure from the cow, as well as a portion of my phosphorous. I have
occasion to use considerable of the potash of commerce in some of my
manufactures. For my land, I make of this a saturated solution, and then
dry it, by stirring into it a mixture of equal parts of ground plaster
and sifted coal ashes. This, in a few days, becomes sulphate of potash,
lime, and coal ashes, at least I judge that it does, for it loses all its
causticity.
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