The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1903-10-27

cent. of the purchase price is paid down
and within a year or two the land has
doubled in value and the money is all
coming back to the Spectator.
The dairy business is developing rap
idly in these western counties, thanks
to the hand separator and the Cont
mental Creamery company, and it is
who have gone into it. The great
trouble is to get the farmers to conduct
it along up-to-date methods instead of
in sliDshod manner. Some of those
who understand it are realizing as high
as hundred dollars a month just from
the cream from a little bunch of cows.
and they have their skim milk left.
Charles l. Quick. the local manager
has paid out as high as $1,000 a month
to the farmers around Colby for cream.
Cream is shipped from practically every
railroad station in western Kansas, both
on the Rock Island and on the Union
Pacific. The great bulk of it goes to
the Continental creamery at Topeka.
The Rock Island runs a train from
Goodland to Belleville. which makes a
speciality of carrying cream, and at
Belleville it connects with a Topeka
train.
The best cows yield as high as five
dollars a month each. but the farmers
understand so little about the dairy
! business and they milk so many poor
dairy cows, that the average is brought
down to about $3.50 per COW per month.
1t requires just as much feed and just
as much work to care for poor cows as
for good ones, yet comparatively few
farmers will study the subject with
view to building up real dairy herds.
Mr. Quick says that some of the east
ern farmers who are now coming into
Thomas county will make a speciality
of dairying. Last Friday four Missouri
around here. They have been dairying
in Missouri on high priced lands but be-
lieve they can make great deal more
out here.
boon for the dairy farmer Formerly
he had to haul his milk to a Swimming
station by the wagon load and he sold
it before it was skinned. Now he runs
it through his hand separator at home
as soon as it is MIXED and he has the
warm skim milk for his calves and pigs.
Then he can take the cream to the ship
ping station in his buggy instead of
wagon.
A H Willis. who lives fourteen miles
southwest of Colby drew creamery
check of 1922 in July. $113 In August. and
is now getting about 500 each month
from the Continental company. Frank
Locke, who lives Just east of Sharon
Springs in Wallace county. gets ABOUT
500 a month from thirty cows. These
are just common range COWS, too, and
their only feed all summer is range buff
falo grass. During the winter they will
be allowed to run on the winter wheat,
alfalfa. Mr.. Quick says that Kaffir
corn and millet hay makes, the best
dairy feed when alfalfa cannot be had.
Buffalo grass makes excellent milk but
| it is not as good this fall as usual be-
cause it was nipped by the early frost
before it had cured and has since made
second growth. which Injuries it for
feed.
Colby is the seat of the United States
| land office for the northwestern coun-
ties, and this makes it a natural center
for homeseekers. There are about 10O,-
600 acres of government land In the
Colby district. of which $1,000 acres are
/ in Cheyenne, $4,000 in Rawlins and II 600
/ in Sherman counties. A plat on any of
/ these three counties, showing the lands
/ open to settlement can be had at the
government land office for a fee of three
/ dollars. Plats of other counties cost
only one dollar
| w. E. Ward, register of the Colby land
office says that $4,000 acres have been
homesteaded in the last three months,
and it is estimated that the greater por-
ton of what is left will be taken up
within the coming year. 1t costs almost
nothing to secure homestead If one
is willing to live on it and improve IT
for five years; or it can be proved up
/ on after fourteen months by paying the
! government from ST. % to $3.50 an acre.
Tt is difficult for people who are not
used to the prairie to locate prairie
lands, but in every county seat there
locating government lands for set
tiers.
Senator John E Hessin. of Manhat-
tan, who is the legal adviser of C. P.
Dewey, came in Friday night from the
Dewey ranch. the headquarters of
which are located thirty miles north of
here. He says the ranch is doing more
! business than ever before.
lust now all the cattle on the ranch
are being dipped" for Texas itch in
compliance with the order of the state
live stock sanitary commission. The
| dipping tank on the ranch is 48 feet
long. y feet deep and three feet wide.
! The cattle are driven into a chute lead
ing into the tank. 1t gets so narrow
! that only ore animal can pass through
at time At the next gate to the
| tank is zinc platform, almost as
slippery as glass When an animal
steps past the middle of this platform
it tips and plunges him into the tank,
(which is full Of a mixture of lime, sui