This cow-room may be furnished with a thermometer, clock, etc., and should always be well ventilated by sliding windows, which at the same time admit the light. [Illustration: Fig. 57a.] Fig. 57a is a transverse section of the cow-room, Fig. 56a, _a_ being a walk behind the cows, five feet wide; _b_, dung-pit; _c_, cattle-stand; _d_, feeding-trough, with a bottom on a level with the platform where the cattle stand; _k_, open area, forty-three feet by fifty-six. The story above the cow-room, Fig. 58a, is one hundred feet by forty-two, the bays for hay, ten on each side, being ten feet front and fifteen feet deep, and the open space, _p_, for the entrance of wagons, carts, etc., twelve feet wide. _b_, hay-scales. _c_, scale-beam. _m m m m m m_, ladders reaching almost to the roof. _l l l_, &c., scuttle-holes for sending vegetables direct to the bins, _l l l_, etc., below. _a a b b_, rooms on the corners for storage. _d_, scuttles, four of which are used for straw, one for cut hay, and one for muck for the cellar. _n_ and the other small squares are eighteen-feet posts. _f_, passage to the tool-house, a room one hundred feet long by fifteen wide. _o_, stairs leading to the scaffold in the roof of the tool-house. _i i_, benches. _g_, floor. _h_, boxes for hoes, shovels, spades, picks, iron bars, old iron, etc. _j j j_, bins for fruit. _k_, scuttles to put apples into wagons, etc., in the shed below. One side of this tool-house may be used for ploughs and large implements, hay-rigging, harrows, etc. [Illustration: Fig. 58a. Room over the cow-room for hay, &c.] Proper ventilation of the cellar and the cow-room avoids the objection that the hay is liable to injury from noxious gases. The excellent manure-cellar beneath this barn extends only under the cow-room. It has a drive-way through doors on each side. No barn-cellar should be kept shut up tight, even in cold weather. The gases are constantly escaping from the manure, unless held by absorbents, and are liable not only to affect the health of the stock, but to injure the quality of the hay. To prevent this, and yet secure the important advantages of a manure-cellar, the barn may be furnished with good-sized ventilators on the top, for every twenty-five feet of its length, and with wooden tubes leading from the cellar to the top. There should also be windows on different sides of the cellar, to admit a free circulation of air. With these precautions, together with the use of absorbents in the shape of loam and muck, there will be no danger of rotting the timbers of the barn, or of risking the health of the cattle or the quality of the hay. The temperature at which the cow-room should be kept is somewhere from 50° to 60°, Fahr. The practice and the opinions of successful dairymen differ on this point. Too great heat would affect the health and appetite of the herd, while too low a temperature is equally objectionable, for various reasons. CHAPTER V. THE RAISING OF CALVES.