Miss Beecher's Housekeeper and Healthkeeper: Containing Five Hundred Receipes for Economical and Healthful Cooking; also, Many Directions for Securing Health and HappinessBeecher, Catharine Esther
General
Miss Beecher's Housekeeper and Healthkeeper: Containing Five Hundred Receipes for Economical and Healthful Cooking; also, Many Directions for Securing Health and Happiness
Beecher, Catharine Esther
Cooking; Home economics
_Shelter_ in winter is most important for cows. They should have good
tight stables or byres, well ventilated, and so warm that water in a
pail will only freeze a little on the top the severest nights. Oxen
should have the same stabling, though they bear cold better. Horses in
stables will bear almost any degree of cold, if they have all they can
eat. Sheep, except young lambs, are well enough sheltered in dry sheds,
with one end open. Cattle, sheep, and dogs do not sweat as horses do,
they “loll;” that is, water or slabber runs from their tongues; hence
they are not liable to take cold as the horse is. Hogs bear cold pretty
well; but they eat enough to convince any one that true economy lies in
giving them warm styes in winter, for the colder they are the more they
eat. Fowls will not lay in cold weather unless they have light and warm
quarters.
_Cleanliness_ is indispensable, if one would keep his animals healthy.
In their wild state all our domestic animals are very clean, and, at
the same time, very healthy. The hog is not naturally a dirty animal,
but quite the reverse. He enjoys currying as much as a horse or cow,
and would be as careful of his litter as a cat if he had a fair chance.
Horses ought to be groomed daily; cows and oxen as often as twice a
week; dogs should be washed with soap-suds frequently. Stables should
be cleaned out daily. Absorbents of liquid in stables should be removed
as often as they become wet. Dry earth is one of the best absorbents,
and is especially useful in the fowl-house. Hogs in pens should have
straw for their rests or lairs, and it should be often renewed.
_Parasitic Vermin._—These are lice, fleas, ticks, the scale insects,
and other pests which afflict our live stock. There are many ways of
destroying them; the best and safest is a free use of _carbolic acid
soap_. The larger animals, as well as hogs, dogs, and sheep, may be
washed in strong suds of this soap without fear, and the application
repeated after a week. This generally destroys both the creatures
and their eggs. Hen lice are best destroyed by greasing the fowls,
and dusting them with flower of sulphur. Sitting hens must never be
greased, but the sulphur may be dusted freely in their nests, and it is
well to put it in all hens’ nests.
_Salt and Water._—All animals except poultry require salt, and all free
supplies of fresh water.
_Light._—Stables, or places where any kind of animals are confined,
should have plenty of light. Windows are not more important in a house
than in a barn. The _sun_ should come in freely; and if it shines
directly upon the stock, all the better. When beeves and sheep are
fattening very rapidly, the exclusion of the light makes them more
quiet, and fatten faster; but their state is an unnatural and hardly a
healthy one.
_Exercise_ in the open air is important for breeding animals. It is
especially necessary for horses of all kinds. Cows need very little,
and swine none, unless kept for breeding.
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