The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1886-12-29

quart of meal with two quarts of shorts
was given, followed by hay, we think
a marked improvement would soon be
seen in the flow and quality of the
milk, or, in dry cow, in her general
appearance. We do not believe in
feeding cows more than twice day in
winter. A peck of potatoes, half
bushel of some other root, or three
pecks of ensilage makes full succulent
ration for an average COW. To this we
would always add both grain and hay,
and we should want considerable clo-
yer in the hay.
(2) The quantity of lean meat in fat
hog cannot be entirely determined by
the feeding. In fact it is very minor
element, the power of feeding to over
come hereditary breeding towards fat
ness being slight. Some swine turn
nearly all their food into fat. The
rivalry among farmers to see which
will have the heaviest hogs at a certain
age tends in the same direction. The
best pork, and that containing the
most lean meat, comes from swine only
moderately "improved " in the direc-
ton of lard-making. These should not
be penned up all their lives, but should
run at large all the time when snow is
off and grass growing. The cheapest
pork is made on pasturage. The hog
by nature is made to live on the soil,
and to get his living out of it himself.
We have violated that nature, funda-
mentally, in our " improved " swine,
eased race thereby. The tendency
now is, among intelligent farmers, to
return to a more natural method than
the one we have borrowed from En-
gland, with her limited territory and
high-priced land. For the last thirty
years the agricultural papers have
been filled with sneers and contempt
for the old land-pike " breed of
American hogs, yet all the time they
have given us our best spare-ribs and
hams. The famous Westphalia hams
of fifty years ago were woods-fed.
There is, of course, no propriety in
going to the extreme in one direction
more than the other; but there is
money now in producing swine that
will give us good sound, solid, lean
in -rih ho,
Some of our native breeds, such as the
White Chester, Magic and Jersey Reds,
furnish starting-point for the change
better than any of the pure English
breeds, but they want to be fed more
naturally, and selected, in breeding,
for the most profitable purpose, which
is not now lard exclusively.
(3) Neither milk, nor any other form of
animal food, is natural nutriment for a
COW, though it is for calf. Natures
reluctance is shown in the difficulty ex-
perienced in teaching a COW to drink it.
Usually they have to be starved to it
at first Notwithstanding these facts,
we are not prepared to say, from our
own limited experience, that milk-feed-
ing is necessarily injurious to a cows
health, or to the quantity or quality of
her milk, cheese or butter. We have
seen cows, and horses, too, trained to eat
the mixed housewife usually fed to
hogs, and they have seemed to like it,
after the taste for it is formed There
is hardly any doubt that such food is
digested and assimilated, perhaps as
well as other food, and yet we cannot
believe it to be proper and suitable, or
likely to be free from injurious effects
in the long run, either upon the ami
mails first fed or upon their progeny, if
the custom is kept up. Were we a
dairyman we should feed our waste
milk to swine, rather than to the cows,
and we believe the great majority of
farmers are of the same mind. The
fresher the milk the more nutriment
there is in it, and sharp sour milk has
very little feeding value compared with
that which is sweet. 1t is also injurious
to the health of animals largely fed
upon it.