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ON

SUPPLYING MILK FOR THE POOR*.

MY LORD,

THE increased spirit with which agricultural pursuits have been carried on for some years past, in every part of the United Empire, may in no small degree be attributed to the zeal and attention of your Honourable Board.

The encouragement it has held out, has proved a powerful inducement for undertaking different experiments; and by the communications of their results to the public, much useful knowledge has been dif fused.

Confiding in your experienced indulgence, and stimulated by the premium offered for the management of winter dairies and supply of milk for the poor, I beg leave to submit, with great diffidence, the result of what I have done in the last two years, towards accomplishing those objects.

The vicinity of a large and populous town had previously afforded me an opportunity of being acquainted

* Communications to the Board of Agriculture.

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with

with the great scarcity of milk, and consequent sufferings of the poor, especially where there are young families, from the impossibility of obtaining, for the greatest part of the year, a supply at any price.

My attention had long been called to the subject, and the accidental perusal of a tract* intended to show the number of lives lost to the community for want of this salubrious aliment for young children, which, united with the encouragement given me by my friend Dr. Taylor, Secretary of the Society of Arts, &c. Adelphi, determined me on making the experiment of furnishing a plentiful supply of new milk during the winter.

I am fully aware that, to enable the public to reap any extensive advantage, it must be clearly and satisfactorily proved, that a fair and adequate profit is to be made. To increase the means of subsistence has in all instances a claim to public favour, but to entitle the plan to be recommended to the Agriculturist, it must be proved to be individually advantageous. With this view, my first enquiries were directed to ascertain the most usual modes of feeding dairy cows during the winter months, in the neighbourhood of large and populous towns, as also the expense attending it.

I found, wherever any quantity of milk was supplied, that the principal dependence was upon grains got from breweries or distilleries, and there was no other method known by which it could be obtained in any profitable quantity.

*By Samuel Ferns, M.D.

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The daily expense of the feed of a milch-cow, near London, is estimated, during the winter months, at two shillings per day. The usual allowance as under:

Weight of Food.

St. lb.

5

6

2 One and a half bushel of grains

6 Two bushels of turnips, at 5d. per

bushel

0 12 Twelve pounds of hay

12 6

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A bushel of grains weighs 3 stone 10lb.; turnips, 3 stone 3 lb. ; the London grains may probably not be so heavy, as they have a better method of extracting the farinaceous matter from them than what is prac tised in country breweries.

Where hay alone was given, or in chief part, I was not so fortunate as to be able to find a single instance, in which any steps had been taken to ascertain the quantity consumed in 24 hours in the feeding one, or any number of cows; or the supposed expense attending it. The answer my enquiries received, in one of the first dairy districts near to London, where hay only is used, was, "That they gave just as much hay as the cows would eat." From the few trials I have made with the long-horned cattle, I am inclined to believe a milchcow would consume, in the twenty-four hours, from two stone to two stone and a half of hay.

The objections against feeding with hay, are, First, the expense, which is much too high in the situations where

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where milk is most required, to enable the dairy-man to afford it, either in sufficient quantities, or at a price to benefit the poor. Secondly, there are besides, few populous towns so circumstanced as to admit of a sufficient quantity of hay-ground being procured for the support of extensive winter dairies; but, Thirdly, supposing it could be had, the superior profits to be made by a summer dairy would decide in favour of applying it to that purpose.

Most farmers consider it as more profitable to make butter in winter, than to sell their milk. I strongly suspect their calculations on this subject not very correctly made, as I shall endeavour to show.

Having no means of procuring grains, and the price of hay precluding the possibility of employing it in feeding milch-cows with any prospect of advantage, I was driven to the necessity of adopting some other me thod. One of the most experienced breeders and feeders of cattle in the county of Durham, or probably in the kingdom, Mr. C. Mason, is of opinion, that no animal will pay the expense of feeding on hay at 2d. per stone, in which I entirely agree with him. This opinion has since been confirmed by Mr. Elman, and various other persons of great practical experience.

On the first proposition for substituting green food for the support of my dairy in winter, I was discouraged by a very prevalent opinion, that cows could not be kept in condition or health on this food alone. I should most probably have declined the attempt, had I not witnesssed the complete success of other experi

ments

ments as much at variance with received opinions and common practice..

Having matured my plan, I determined to appropriate twenty-two acres of land, within less than a mile of a town containing eight thousand inhabitants, with a view of raising green crops for the purpose of sup plying it with milk, and for the support of my other stock, during the winter months. I was in a great measure ignorant of the quantity of green food that would be required for each head of cattle.

The ground was cropped with four acres of drumhead cabbages; six acres of common red turnip; two acres of Swedish turnip; one of kohlrabi; and nine acres of coleseed. The milch-cows were turned out in good weather into a dry sheltered pasture of sixteen acres, which had been so hard stinted, as to afford them little or no food, but had the advantage of plenty of good water.

In the beginning of April, 1804, the cabbages were transplanted: by this early planting they have always succeeded better than those of my neighbours which were later set. The turnips were sown by the drill, in stitches at three feet distance, and the utmost attention paid to the cleaning of the whole, not only for the benefit of the present crop, but for that of the succeeding ones. The turnips proved a failing crop in many parts; the other green crops were very productive and weighty.

The stock of cattle fed in sheds consisted of thirtythree; twenty-two milch-cows, eight of them had been spring calvers, the remainder heifers. I notice this circumstance,

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