Vermont farmer. [volume] (Newport, Orleans County, Vt.) 1870-1877, 1877-05-18

neighbors, would have made $50 pounds il
addition. Please note that this last is an
estimate and not figures. With this estimate
land IL was intended to be below the figure
rather than above) we have for the year
2,434 pounds of butter. The whole amount
sold for sl,00l.4l, by reckoning what We
used in the family at the same price We
sold for. How much the skim milk was
worth iu growing and fattening 2 800 pounds
Of pork will not estimate.
will sqparely state that there arc no pc.
culiar circumstances about these COWS, or
making the butter, nor about reporting the
reporting the income. Because there are
many neat wives in our farm houses who do
not, and perhaps cannot make fancy butter
because of certain circumstances beyond their
control, is no agrument at all against the
suggestion that to raise the standard of in.
come from our cows it is not only desirable
but necessary to have such wives IF to at
tend the dairy of eight or ten cows is as
not supcrintend dairy of twenty-five or
every seventy five COWS if she is
furnished all the half she is furnished oil the
help she needs to do the hard work ? A
neighbor recently visited a farm in the west
ern part of the State, where man was keep.
ing sovonty-fve COWS, and his wife was super.
intending the whole business. | know there
is many farmers wife who would be glad
to, and would make good butter if she had
good material furnished her to make it of /;
and there are many other wives who never
will made good butter with any material,
because they think they must not digress
from the ways of their grandmothers. A
man having examined herd of cows recent
ly, with the intention of purchasing one for
his own use, asked him how he liked them.
He said he didn't know, for they were 50
thickly coated with manure that he could not
get near enough to them to tell. Now,
brother farmers this ought not to be SO, and
there is no need Of it. Just think of
woman trying to make factory butter from
milk drawn from cows so besmeared with
dlth that man cannot get near enough to
them to tell what they are; it is impossible,
and unjust to expect it of them. If man
is keeping COWS for their income, it matters
not whether he be lawyer, legislator, or
man Of any other profession, or if he is a
farmer who obtains his living off his farm, it
is all the same, provided equal judgment is
used in used in caring for them, and they
kept for profit and not for the object Of learn
ing how many cows can be dragged through
the winter on the smallest amount of hay.
1t may be said the average farmer has no
grain to feed his cows, nor money with which
to purchase it. Perhaps this trouble can be
reme1ied. Let me illustrate. Suppose a
farmer has 10 the fall six cows that he in
tends to winter; if he does so no must feed
them hay but no grain, and the consequence
is a small yield of poor white milk, up to
three or four months before calving, and
then they 60 dry. The result is they come
out weak aud poor in the spring and are
worth about half price through the summer.
From these poorly fed cows the neat wife
makes in the winter little poor, white but.
ter, unless she colors it, and them she has a
little poor colored butter, enough perhaps
for the family to eat, and a little to sell if
she can find any one who will buy it. This
is the way the farmer gets $50 income from
a COW but not one cent Of profit.
Now take another view of the case. In
the fall this man sells two of his cows, say
for $50, if they arc pretty good ones, and
with the money he buys three tons of shorts
or its equivalent in whatever he likes best,
and he feeds this to the four COWS that he
has left. Now, what is the effect ol this
change? | will give it from my own stand
point. First, the manure made by the four
grain fed cows will be worth as much as that
from the six without grain, and he has six OF
seven tons Of hay in his barn which the other
two cows would have eaten, for take it for
granted that he would in both Instances have
commenced feeding his cows carly in the
fall, and not have let them grub the fields
until they could grub no longer, by reason ol
the snow that covered them. Secondly, the
four cows will give milk two months longer
than in the other case, and the milk will
make twice as much butter, and instead ol
being obliged to place his butter on the mar,
ket at low price he will have an article
il he has good o!pmeet-which is firm aud
waXy, and which will command fancy
price at his own door. And lastly these four
COWS in the spring will be in good
condition, aud worth more and will
be more income through tho summer
than the six would have been, aud if one of
them should break a leg, the farmer will
have soue beef for butcher instead Of bone,
for the soup maker. This is the way th'
farmer obtains 500 income.
Green Fodder Crops.