The herd was doing excellently for mid-winter,--the yield amounted to a daily average of 840 pounds throughout the month, and I was able to make good my contract with the middleman. I could see breakers ahead, however, and it behooved me to make ready for them. I decided to buy ten more thoroughbreds in new milk, if I could find them. I wrote to the people from whom I had purchased the first herd, and after a little delay secured nine cows in fresh milk and about four years old. This addition came in February, and kept my milk supply above the danger point. Since then I have bought no cows. Thirty-four of these thoroughbreds are still at Four Oaks--two of them have died, and three have been sold for not keeping up to the standard--and are doing grand service. Their numbers have been reenforced by twenty of their best daughters, so there are at this writing fifty-four milch cows and five yearling heifers in the herd. Most of the calves have been disposed of as soon as weaned. I have no room for more stock on my place, and it doesn't pay to keep them to sell as cows. Four Oaks is not a breeding farm, but a factory farm, and everything has to be subordinated to the factory idea. My thoroughbred calves have brought me an average price of $12 each at four to six weeks, sold to dairymen, and I am satisfied to do business in that way. The nine milch cows which I bought to complete the herd cost, delivered at Four Oaks, $1012. All the grain fed to cows, horses, and hogs, and a portion of that fed to chickens, is ground fine before feeding. The grinding is done in the granary by a mill with a capacity of forty bushels an hour. We make corn meal, corn and cob meal, and oatmeal enough for a week's supply in a few hours. All hay and straw is cut fine, before being fed, by a power cutter in the forage barn, and from thence is taken by teams in box racks to the feeding rooms, where it is wetted with hot water and mixed with the ground feed for the cows and horses, and steamed or cooked with the ground feed for the hogs and hens. Alfalfa is the only hay used for the hens, and wonderfully good it is for them. Besides feed for the hogs, we have to provide ashes, salt, and charcoal for them. These three things are kept constantly before them in narrow troughs set so near the wall that they cannot get their feet into them. We carefully save all wood ashes for the hogs and hens, and we burn our own charcoal in a pit in the wood lot. Five cords of sound wood make an abundant supply for a year. I think this side dish constantly before swine goes a long way toward keeping them healthy. Clean pens, well-balanced and well-cooked food, pure water, and this medicine can be counted on to keep a growing and fattening herd healthy during its nine months of life.