Norwich bulletin., 1909-12-11

u@NO SccUt TcdQ ana undergone, should think that the old-f fashioned, ''practicaT' farmer who discards all theory and simply sticks to what his own experience has taught him, is apt to make the most money. The book farmer, who reads up all about some special crop and soil and coddles the two in accordance with his reading. is apt to get the biggest yield-at the highest cost. But neither of these is success" Making money, alone. is not success-never was and never will be. so long as there are so many other and better things in life. Nor is the raising of a two hundred pound pump kin on land which never before pro- .duced over twenty pounds success, making money; granted; 1t also in cludes making manhood. And to make the two things, at the same time, on farm, requires just about all the knowledge, i. e., the science, which can be accumulated from any and all sources. That's why it seems short sighted folly for any farmer to ignore books utterly and to sheer at "scien- tific' farming.
 Nevertheless, there is such a thing as being too durn scientific. The other day, reading an article by professor in big agricultural college on the fas- cinating topic of "A Cow to the Acre." wherein he told what a man with for ty acres and forty good dairy cows could do, came across this sentence: "He cannot afford to give his cows pasturage but pasturage is the most expensive feed anyway, so we can well eliminate this.''
 Right there ended my reading of that particular article. "Pasturage the most expensive feedl" Oh, rats!
 I have a neighbor who goes in for fancy farming on 0 big scale. His speciality is dairying. He has big modern barn. all finished to the queens taste; cement floors, big ventilators, patent reversible self-dumping hang CTS, running water always before the animals, manure carriers on hanging tracks, big silos. Babcock testers, im- proved separators and churns, sanitary milk and butter rooms, etc, etc. His herdsman is a graduate and his milk CTS wear sterilized linen clothes at milking time, and wash their hands in medicated water with antiseptic soap, and dry them on towels that have been boiled and baked and fricaseed, for aught know. He had been taught by this professor or some other highly certificated scientific authority in dairy ing that pasturage was expensive and unsatisfactory fodder for cows. So he kept his sixty head of Dure-blooded, high bred stock all the year round in this fancy barn, with only an occasion al run in a small yard on particularly pleasant days. They were scientifical. ly fed and watered and groomed and milked and blanketed.
 And he has just had nearly half the had condemned as tuberculosis. The experienced and common sense veter- mary who examined them did not he's itate to say, so I am told. that they had been kept shut in too much. That Is, they hadn't had enough of that very pasturage run which some Of these ul- tra scientists condemn. Now, l have not the slightest idea what my neigh bor pays for his COW feed in stable; nor could l guess what pasturage would have cost him for the open months. It may or may not be that the first money cost of pasturage would have been the greater Really 1t makes no difference whether it would have been or not. Certainly it could not have been enough greater to counter balance the loss he has now had.
 The manager of one of the biggest dairy farms in the great state of New York wrote over his own signature In an agricultural paper, some years ago. that his idea of the proper care of a
  stable as soon as she had her first calf and keep her in it till she was fifteen years old. I should just like to have that tried on a good sized herd, some time, and see how many would live to he fifteen and pass satisfactorily a test for tuberculosis. say every three years.
 The farmer who lets his cows lie outdoors through all sorts of wintry New England weather, and feeds them on nothing but mouldy cornstalks and swale hay, isn't likely to get rich from dairying. Per contra, the farmer who treats his cows much as if they were members of young ladies finishing school-well, he mustn't wonder If they turn out about as delicately invalid There's a difference. between animals and folks. Nature, which denied them reason. gave them an instinct which, for their particular safety and welfare, is about a thousand times better than our best reason. That is, than our best reason as applied to them. We don't know, any Of us. all the secrets of Old Brindle's internal economy. We ant tell, any of us, just how part of her food is diverted to the mainte- nance of warmth or just how another part of the same food goes to make milk, and another part to enrich that milk with it's varying proportions of butter fat. We know a good many things about how her rations act, but we don't know them all nor anywhere near all. And the man who, basing his dogmatism on his half knowledge, asserts 1atly that we must do this. that or 'tother for her, regardless of her instinct, is either excessively self conceited or something worse. As be- tween Professor KnOW-it -alrS theories