The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1890-06-25
Editorial NOtings.

Editorial NOtings.
WHAT is all this rot about the hon
est farmer" that we have been hearing
so long? " Fair words butter no pars-
nips." There are no statistics to prove
that farmers are more or less honest
than other people. The question is
not up, and has nothing to do with the
farmers right to fair deal. The
rights which farmers claim are their
inalienable rights as citizens of free
country, as against monopolstic trusts
and corporations. When we get there,
good and safe, we will be ready to dis
cuss the question of relative honesty
among classes of citizens desired.
INTELLIGENT feeding means not
only good feeding, it means also eco
nomical feeding-usng the word in
its true sense.
THE experiment station of New
York says, in report: We have
been furnished with the rations fed by
ten of the leading and most successful
dairymen and breeders of the state.
AS evidence of this l would say that
the average of three of them who turn
their attention to the production of
butter is 1868 pounds of butter per COW
annually, from $50 to 200 per cent
more than the average of the state as a
whole. Well, now, one of these ten
feeds his cows daily ration costing
twenty-eight cents per cow, while
another, getting practically as good re-
suits, feeds ration costing fourteen
cents per COW per day, the feed of one
costing exactly one hundred per cent
more than the feed of the other. But
a saving of one cent day upon the
dairy cows of New York is over S15,-
600 daily, nearly S6,000,000 a year.
But here is a difference between our
most intelligent dairymen of fourteen
cents per day. Still another feeds
ration costing thirty-one and a half
cents a day, or 125 per cent greater.
THE CABBAGE WORM is very vora-
cious little beast. We have tried many
ways to outgeneral him, but none
was entirely successful. The butterfly
mother is spry and quick on the wing,
and requires an experienced bug-hunter
to net her. 1t is not allowable to use
paris green, or other mineral poisons,
and the vegetable poisons, like helle-
bore, tobacco and pyrethrum (fy pow
der, though they kill many worms, do
not reach those which have worked
themselves well down between the
leaves. Here is new remedy, which
we find recommended in an exchange:
The writer says all that is necessary is
to keep the crowns filled with soil. One
can walk along the rows and do it with
a hoe. The earth does no harm to the
cabbages, as the heads grow up from
the bottom, and this throws off the
earth. Among the 1000 plants treated
in this way he neither saw nor heard
of earth being found in any of the heads
when cut.
GRAIN FEEDING for cows at pasture
is becoming not unusual with our best
dairymen. On this subject the editor
of the Maine Farmer, who is a good
dairyman, remarks that " the two prime
factors involved in feeding stock are
cost and profit. This applies to cows,
as it does to all other stock kept There
is much written about theoretical ra-
TONS especially by those who know
little of any others, and balanced ra-
tons by the same class of writers.
The theoretical ration is one in which
the food nutrients of which it is made
up exactly meet the wants of the ami
NAL fed; and by balanced ration is
meant ration in which the differing
nutrients are so balanced one with
the other as to exactly make up the
theoretical standard. The theory is
sound, without question, but it by no
means follows that the farmer should
always bring his practice up to it. The
farmer cares nothing about theoretical
rations or balancing his folders, in the
abstract, nor should he do so. His
business is concerned with the factor
profit. To guard well this factor he
must study well that other factor, cost
DIR. Lawes took the ground some months
since that the compromising of ratiOn'
by the farmer was more question OF
cost of feeds than of balancing of nu
trients. The position greatly aston
ished some of our scientific investigat
ors, but from the standpoint of thu