Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1890-03-20
APPLES ON TIE FARM.
their Value a. Food Tor the st0ck-Ia-
suring Health aud Promoting FattenIng
Qualities.

| suring Health aud Promoting Fattenlng
Qualities.
1t is not claimed for the apple that il
is complete food in itself, but on the
food list il possesses a value far above
the nutrients it furnishes. Apples aid
the stomach in the digestion OF other
foods, and therefore the best results are
obtained from eating them after,
rather than before meals. If one feels
that he has eaten more dinner than is
compatible with his after comfort he
will find that an apple viii facilitate an
early digestion and afford greater relief
than an alcoholic drink or drugstore
prescription.
| Adapting this same theory TO all kinds
of livestock, horses. cattle, hogs. sheSp
and even poultry. we find that their APP
petite prompts them TO eat apples. and
that they receive the same benefit there
from that we do; that is, the fruit is
a partial food, and il also enables
them 70 digest and assimilate from
twenty-five to fifty per cent. more food
than they would otherwise be able to
appropriate.
Relative to this I remember, says a
contributor TO the Country Gentleman,
hearing parsimonious farmer say that
his animals already ate too much, even
without the aid of an appetizer This
man was trying to feed his livestock
quantity just equal to the food of sup
port; he simply proposes to preserve the
stdtu quo and postpones the growth to
some future day. He has not learned
I, a1 haf oha
support which the animal is able to de-
vote to growth, fat or the production Of
milk.
The more we can get an animal to eat,
provided always that he digests and
assimilates the foot taken, the greater
the profit in feeding. Farmers lose
much by feeding sparingly. and by not
making the ration complementary.
There is scarcely farm product that is
an all-round food either for man or
beast.
An inexperienced farmer, seeing how
fast his neighbor's hogs fattened and
how many pumpkins they ate tried to
fatten his hogs on pumpkins alone. He
failed, of course, and then said there
was about as much richness in pumpkin
as in good yellow pond water; whereas
those who have given pumpkins fair
trial assert that three wagon loads of
corn and one of pumpkins are equal to
four loads OF corn fed alone. The one
per cent. of peptic acid in the pumpkin
insures the hog against dyspepsia, and
prolongs the fattening period as long as
you may think advisable.
In planting an orchard for livestock,
rame mber that the sweet apple is con-
sidered the most nutritious, the sub
acid less so, but more valuable as an ap-
petiEer, while sour apples are of little
use except in the latter direction, and
are not very much sought for in that
either by man or beast. Still it is a
good idea to have some trees of each
kind, though there should always be a
preponderance of the sub-acids. Leave
out all the large varieties as being
sparse bearers, and try to get those that
have shown acclimation, and which APP
pear suited to the soil of your neighbor
hood. Buy one-third summer, one-third
fall and one-third winter apples, though
our experience with winter apples in
Kentucky is that most of them fall of
in autumn. This is just as it should be.
however, for large proportion Of those
we put up for winter tail to keep.
When the first apple falls put some
kind of animal in the orchard. A good
farmer never likes to see any thing
wasted; besides it 10 very important
that the apple should be eaten at once
before the grub has time to burrow into
the ground. Hogs fatten to advantage
in an Enclosure where they have a
variety of food, as corn. grass, fruit, etc.
IL is better for tree to head low, and
some of our best farmers do not trim
their ample trees at all, but let them
grow as they will, or should one happen
to prove unusually perverse, they dig il
up and sew grass where it grew Even
if the first died young, another tree
should never be planted in exactly the
same spot.
Our young orchards are usually cult
waited in corn, peas, potatoes and the
like, but never in small grain. Should
the trees appear to grow too much and
bear too little after chey have attained
the requisite size, il is good plan to
SOW the land down in grass and let it be
grazed and tramped. This will cause
the tree to grow less wood and pay more
attention 20 fruit.