HOW SHALL WE RESTORE WORNOUT PASTURES?

This is a vital question, and as frequently asked as any in the whole range of agriculture. There are pastures that can be plowed, but there are vastly more acres that the plow can never touch. Now, can we fertilize by top dressing or by feeding sheep and supplying plant food in that way, or must we let nature take her course and refresh the pastures no longer productive of good feed? These are among the most important problems for our station to grasp.

In the field of stock feeding there is a vast labor yet to be performed. I have already said that in New Hampshire to-day we have 94,329 cows, 22,419 oxen, 59,285 horses, 155,685 sheep, 47,476 other cattle, representing a value of $8,936,641. The value of this investment to us as an agricultural State depends upon the income which we derive from the animals making up this sum. A cow is an animated machine. If we give her suitable raw material in the right quantity, she will produce milk for us. The weaver knows that it is impossible to make a woolen web from cotton warp and woof; but there are cows in this State to-day that are expected to make milk from food utterly inadequate. Hence, if the experiment station can by any means throw light upon the every-day labor of the stock feeder, it can but accomplish much good.

As already noted, a thousand-pound cow needs sixteen cents worth of hay and grain per day, and this is four cents lower than the Massachusetts milkmen count the cost. Allowing two thirds of the 94,329 cows to be in milk, it will cost daily to feed them ten thousand dollars, and to feed the remaining one third on a maintenance ration will cost ten cents each per day, or $3,144; total for our cows, $13,144. We feed two hundred days in the barn here in New Hampshire; the cost is $2,628,800. That this cost per head per day can be reduced to ten cents is certain, and allowing all the cows in the State to receive this ration, the winter's keep would amount to $1,886,580, a saving of $742,220. Some may say these figures are on paper. Yes, they are, but they are backed by facts which would make the difference even greater than here appears. Now, if the station is

managed in the interest of farmers, as it should be, it can put in the hands of every dairyman in the State plain, practical experiments, guiding him towards this saving.

Must we in New Hampshire abandon the product of beef? At present the question seems answered in the affirmative. I can point to sections where five years ago there were being fed a hundred steers for each one that is fed to-day. Our farmers will have a right to look to the experiment station for light on this branch of stock farming. Cannot a rotation of crops, stored cheaply in inexpensive silos, fed to improved breeds in comfortable stables, solve this problem? May we not yet produce beef at a reasonable rate proportionate to the present selling-price? I hope so, and I am in no wise certain that beef production is ruled out forever; but this I do know, no man can feed, as we have been feeding, to scrub steers and farrow cows high-priced foods, poorly proportioned, sell his finished product at the present prices, and avoid loss; it is impossible. Now, if by careful investigation, commencing with the calf, feeding cheaply produced skim-milk, enriched with cheap but pure vegetable oils, enforced, and finally superseded, by succulent forage cheaply produced and supplemented with grains and concentrated food, there is even a possibility of once more restoring beef production to a profitable basis. It is the duty of the station to exert every effort towards accomplishing this desirable result, and if it demonstrates the impossibility of the undertaking, the result is none the less desirable; for to know and thus be able to avoid a calamity is as desirable as to know the roads to success.

I have thus generalized concerning the work of the station in stock feeding. Now let me map out a detailed line of work, such as to me seems desirable; and, that I may follow some order, I will start with the calf. It has been laid down as a law that the stomach of the calf is incapable of digesting solid food. Nature provided it with liquid food, easily digested, namely milk; but man, in his desire to pay his honest bills, has invented ways of retaining one valuable part of the milk, the fat, which, when manufactured into butter, commands a high price as an article of human diet. But how fares the calf on the residue, the skim-milk? He lives, grows, and is reasonably thrifty; but

is it impossible for us to substitute some cheap fat in place of the butter? When olive oil became too costly for human consumption, or, rather, when mankind demanded a cheaper oil, the cottonseed, which was once a nuisance and absolutely useless, was made to yield up an oil which by purification was made palatable, and is to-day almost exclusively used in putting up sardines, and much of the so-called olive oil sold for table uses is the product of the cotton plant rather than the olive. If man can eat and thrive on cottonseed oil, why may not our calves be fed skim-milk in which three to five per cent of cottonseed oil is intimately mixed or emulsified?

The fat in milk is worth twenty-five cents per pound to man, and a substitute can be used which need not cost three cents. Let our station make this matter a subject of study, and let the details of the process, the amount of oil, and the kind as well, be worked out. It may cost the lives of a half-dozen calves, worth a score of dollars; but if it could be shown to us as farmers that veal may be produced from skim-milk and cottonseed oil, then how long will it take to repay all expenses a thousand times over? When our calf comes to that stage of development where milk may be omitted and solid food introduced, then let easily digested food be adapted to his wants, and, above all, let it be found by numerous experiments whether the theory that ensilage is fatal to calves is true or false, and if true, let the reasons be found, if possible, that they may be avoided. We will suppose that our calf is a heifer, and destined to become a dairy cow. Is it yet established that early feeding does or does not materially modify the future cow? Can any one tell me the best food to feed a yearling heifer, a food that will develop her inilk and butter qualities? and should she have a highly carbonaceous diet, or does it make no difference? These are points of vast importance to the dairy-man. It would seem reasonable to suppose that a heifer destined to become a dairy cow ought to be fed differently than a steer whose destination might be the beef barrel, and it is the general belief, as the result of observation, that an animal may be injured while young by a diet of too fattening a nature. Hence it is clear that there is reason for investigation in the direction

of determining the effect of food in establishing dairy qualities in animals. To put this idea in tangible form, suppose the experiment station start with six or eight heifers of known blood, and suppose three of them to be fed on a fattening ration, keeping them fit for the butcher or nearly so, and suppose the others to be fed a diet less highly nitrogenous, thus developing the muscular system more and producing less fat. Then when the time of lactation begins let each lot be fed alike and their milk and butter tendencies noted. I am satisfied, and I doubt not most of you are, that there would be a decided difference, and yet can any one point to a definite proof on this point? It is one thing to believe a theory, and another to prove it. The experiment station, if it is true to the interests of agriculture, will offer proof, not vague theories.

In feeding for beef it should be the object, toward which the energy of the station should be directed, to determine the most profitable age for maturing beef. We all have opinions on this point, but the difficulty is, our opinions are not all alike. There are those who believe that late maturity is best, arguing that it is nature's way, and hence that it is probably best. On the other hand, there are a vast number of feeders who regard it as essential to force the steer up to the thousand-pound notch in the least practicable time. Now who shall decide? I have my belief, you have yours. What both of us desire is a practical demonstration of the cost per pound of the beef produced in each of the ways above indicated, and it is the duty of the experiment station to furnish us with this information. There are probably more useful lines of investigation which may be carried on in feeding dairy animals than in any other direction, because there are so many dairy products. Let us take a halfdozen good dairy cows and see how many problems we can suggest as being worthy of investigation.

On the average New Hampshire farm will be found the following kinds of fodder, which as a business transaction the farmer must convert into cash, and if he chooses the line of dairy farming he necessarily desires to feed this fodder in the most economical way. There will be found English hay, or, as commonly spoken of, mixed hay, herd's-grass, redtop, and clover, clover

hay or the stubble hay in which clover predominates, swale or meadow hay made up of almost everything from polipod to herd's-grass. Then there is the oat straw, the wheat and barley straw, the corn-fodder, and the millet perhaps, and there are or can be ensilage and roots. There are also the grains, corn, barley, and oats, which can be used, and at the store can be bought cottonseed, gluten, linseed, shorts, middlings, etc. Then let us feed three of our cows on English hay, oat straw, corn meal, and gluten, the other three on clover hay, oat straw, corn meal, and gluten. In such rations we could, after a few shifts, determine the relative value of English hay and clover, a matter of no small importance and well worthy of careful investigation. The milk from these cows should be weighed and analyzed to determine the per cent of fat, caseine, water, solids, etc., and to still further enhance the value of the results the milk should be worked up into butter to determine the exact value of the food, not only as far as quantity of milk is concerned, but to determine its quality as well. Then by placing a market value on all food consumed the cost per quart of milk could be determined. The next shift might properly be to ensilage, straw, and the same grains as before. This when well carried out would give data for fixing a value upon ensilage as compared with clover and English hay, and at the same time the quality of the milk might be determined, both by analysis and by churning. Another experiment might with profit be conducted comprising roots and ensilage. Then after comparing the coarse fodders, as above briefly indicated, it would be desirable to point out the kind of concentrated grain best adapted to milk and butter production. In a series of carefully conducted tests at the college farm in the winter of 1885-86, I was able to demonstrate that I could save three fourths of a cent per quart on milk by using gluten meal instead of linseed, and had time and means permitted I might have carried this test much further, comparing shorts, middlings, cottonseed, etc. Here is an important work. Our farmers must buy some concentrated grain to feed with the coarse fodders of the farm, and it is as easy to procure one kind as another, the cost of using is the same, and the only two facts involved are first cost of the grain and product derived from it. If it is true