White Cloud Kansas chief. [volume] (White Cloud, Kan.) 1857-1872, 1858-01-28
fot tbt farmer.
Keen the Stable Floor, Cleau.

We know divers people who take
some pride in their horses and cattle, but
who are inVeterate slovens in their sta
bles. Their racks and managers are so
made that half the hay they give their
stock is wasted Ald drawn under their
feet. They don't clean their stables once
week or fortnight. AZ
We have, indeed, seen stables where
valuable animals were kept, not cleaned
ont for an entire winter, and the heels of
the poor beasts stood foot higher than
their fore feet in the latter part of the
season.
We once hired barn-a nice, newly
built barn too-of man for the winter;
and when we went to put our stock into
it, found that the horse stable sill was
more than two feet above the ground,
and the poor beasts had to leap that high
to get into it. and fall down or make a
leap every time they went out of it; and
also, that full eighteen inches of solid
horse dung had to be thrown out, taking
man half day 70 do it, before we could
use it; besides repairing the entrance by
bridge that they could walk in and ont
upon. We scolded the owner soundly
for his laziness-it was nothing else
and he only answered that che hadn't
time to clean it, and didn't see what harm
it did the horsesr' And yet, when we
came to settle with him in the Spring, he
wanted US to pay some dollars extra be-
cause we used a part of his barn floor to
mix our cut feed upon, on the plea that
in wetting our feed for mixing, it rotted
his floor during the winter! His half
dozen loads of horse dung, seething and
fermenting through long hot Summer,
didn't rot the stable floor! Ohm Just
so some folks are constituted.
A stable where stock is kept should
be cleaned out once day, at least, and
twice is none too much. In all our sta
BILE practice, we clean the stables twice a
day, and shake up the bedding, let the
weather be as it will. On the floors of
our calf and sheep stables we scatter dry
litter. When that gets thoroughly soiled
and saturated, we clean it out and supply
its place with fresh. The ammonia aris-
ing from the stale of stock in the sta
bles becomes, in short time, very often
sive to them, as it is ourselves. 1t pene-
trates their lungs and gives them disease.
Its pungency affects their eyes, making
them sore and irritable, and is a positive
injury, to say nothing about the sloven-
illness Of leaving the stables unclean.-
Cleanliness, indeed, is as necessary to
beast as to man. No creature can thrive
when fouled and besmeared with ordure.
When horses mot mares) and oxen
stand regularly, holes should be bored
through the floor to let their stale run
through on to muck below, or into
trench by which it may pass off and be
saved. Otherwise, it remains under them
to make them uncomfortable when they
lie down, unless they have bedding
enough to fully absorb it, which is not
always convenient. Our own plan of
stable flooring is to raise that part on
which the animals stand two inches
the thickness of the plank-above the
passage behind, and sloping from the foot
ofthe manger back, to give fall of one
to two inches in the distance of six or
seven feet of floor on which they stand,
to admit the stale to pass off readily, as
well as to let the droppings on to the
lower level behind them. F. ~