Grain for Cows in Fall

1916

Many dairymen have learned that it pays to keep their cows milking during the last part of the fall and winter. Last November the owner of herd G in our testing association was feeding very little grain, just a few pounds a day to each cow, whether milking or not. He told me that he didn't think it would pay to feed any more grain to his cows until they began to freshen. After talking the thing over he decided to begin feeding grain in proportion to the amount of milk produced, following the rule of about one pound grain to 3½ pounds milk.

The next month I came around I noticed quite a change; most of his cows had increased in milk, and cows that had been kept at a loss in November were making a little profit above feed cost in December. His herd summary showed a loss of $13.73 for November. In December he jumped from a loss of $13.73 to a profit of $28. His cows had increased in production enough to pay for extra grain feed and their hay and still have a very good profit left. Had he not begun feeding more grain his cows undoubtedly would have shrunk in milk flow in December, and consequently his loss for that month would have been even greater than it was in November.

In another herd the owner was planning to cut out the grain ration for most of his cows. He told me that he never fed grain in the winter because he didn't think that it paid. He said: "Grain is high and it will not pay." I began explaining to him where he would lose if he left out the grain. He is an old man and has been connected with the dairy business a number of years. After talking a while about it he said: "I'm in this association to learn what I can, and I'll try your plan of feeding for a while, if it don't put me into the hole too bad."

Having the weight of milk from each cow he figured out approximately the amount of grain each cow should have giving about one pound grain to 3½ pounds milk. He has fed according to this rule ever since. As a result his herd made a profit of better than $45 for November, December and January. His cows freshened in the early spring so one would not expect a very large profit from a herd of cows due to freshen in two to four months.

On my January visit to his place he told me his cows had always been dry at that time of year and it was quite unusual for him to take milk to the creamery during at least a couple of months in the year. He said: "I am convinced that it has paid to feed some grain and thereby get enough more milk to pay for hay and grain and have a little profit left over rather than not to feed grain and let the cows dry off as they usually did and consequently not pay for the hay they eat."

The other advantages of feeding grain which are not shown by figures are as follows: First, manure is worth more, ton for ton, than if no grain is fed; secondly, cattle are undoubtedly in a better condition; third, a cow that is fed some grain will not eat as much hay as when no grain used. — Archie Holden, New Hampshire in New England Homestead.

All Over The State

1916

A most successful as well as profitable round trip from New York to Buenos Ayres was completed by the five-masted schooner, Harwood Palmer. She went out from Norfolk with coal and back to New York with linseed, four months and 27 days being occupied on the double voyage. The vessel stocked the comfortable sum of $145,000, which goes to show that there is still some money in the shipping business.

—The Fryeburg Post, Fryeburg, Maine, Sept. 26, 1916, p. 1.

Why Restaurants Are Sometimes Insanitary

1916

By Woods Hutchinson
The World's Best Known Writer on Medical Subjects

There is little actual reason for the public to become wildly alarmed over this 99½% per cent badness in the official scoring of restaurants and lunch counters, because conditions in public eating places have probably always been just as bad as they are now since the time when memory of man runneth not back to the contrary — and we still survive in a moderate state of preservation. The only reason why we didn't know of them was that no private individual had the stomach, and no public official took the trouble to penetrate those steamy and smelly regions of mystery behind the battered and sweat-marked swinging door at the back of the eating room. The occasional whiffs which escaped from there when the wind was in the right quarter were quite enough.

In the language of the hymn, there are some things which "'tis better not to know." But now that their nauseating secrets have been discovered and dragged out into the pitiless light of day and published broadcast, there is only one thing to be done, and that is, wipe them out of existence, as the restaurateurs have crestfallenly recognized and are proceeding to do with the best grace they may. Of twenty-two reinspected over half were found to have made marked improvement.

Not Finicky Verdict

Nor can it fairly be claimed that this extraordinary low rating of a great group of successful restaurants is due to finicky and unattainable standards of healthfulness. This was the not unnatural conclusion suggested in a good many of the first comments upon the findings. There is nothing superfine or fantastic about the shortcomings reported, nothing that requires a microscope to see or a chemical reaction to detect. Just an ordinary eye and an unspoiled nose and an average sense of decency and cleanliness are all that is required.

No scrapings were made from walls or refrigerators, or the cuffs and lapels of waiters' jackets, no bacteriologic counts made of the platings, no analyses for tenths of a per cent of some adulterant, or for the use of wood vinegar in place of cider vinegar in the dressings. Every fault found was perfectly visible to the naked eye. Food was found standing or stored on the floor. Cooks were found preparing dishes with unwashed hands and in filthy, ragged clothing.

Scraps and leavings from the plates were resurrected in the next day's soups and stews and minces. "Spot" eggs and low grade, that is, rancid, butter, were used in the pastry and puddings which could not be sold upon the delicatessen counters in open daylight was sent back to the restaurant and concocted into goulashes and ragouts and hamburger steaks. The phrase "in the soup" has acquired a new and sinister significance. Dishes and plates were only half cleaned in greasy, reeking dishwater, or wiped upon slimy, filthy dish towels. Dish washers, scullery men, and even cooks and waiters were found with skin diseases of the hands and face, catarrh, tuberculosis, even typhoid, and other disgusting or communicable disorders.

Dark Kitchens Menace

In fact, as Inspector Brown quietly remarks, "The requirements for scoring the grade 'good' are only such as any citizen would wish and expect for the handling of his own food." They are nothing more than would be expected as a matter of course, in any decent private kitchens. Not that all home kitchens do come up to these standards, but a good many of them do.

One of the reasons why public kitchens have got into this slipshod, unhygienic custom of the trade way of doing things is partly because they are Over-crowded and badly lighted, and either on account of high rents, or of the desirability of using as much as possible of the front and well lighted, attractive parts of their space for dining rooms, show windows and display purposes generally, the kitchens and sculleries are crowded into back rooms or driven underground into cellars or basements.

Anything can happen and usually will happen in the dark or in a bad light, and practically every dark corner sooner or later becomes dirty and unsanitary. Commercialism and cooking don't mix well and when the cook's eye is chiefly on profits, stomachs are apt to suffer.

Care of the Cows

1896

Have you ever watched your cows on a bitter cold day sneak slowly up to the water trough where you have broken the ice and stick her tongue in the cold water several times until she got used to it, then take a little sip and a little more until she could stand no more of it. Then she will walk slowly over the frozen ground until she gets in the shelter of an old wagon, and there with her back humped up she will stand for two or three hours shivering until what feed she has eaten has had time to warm that water up to a living temperature?

How long ought it to take a sensible man to find out where all of his feed is going, no matter whether it is a milk cow or a dry one. Nearly every pound she eats is needed to warm that water, and little is left to repair the body, much less to make milk or fat of. The simplest kind of a heating apparatus will cost not over ten cents a day to heat the water for a small herd twice a day. It will pay for itself twice over during the winter in food it will save and the milk it will allow the cows to make, and it will do the same in adding flesh to the other cattle, especially the young ones.

Then go a step further and buy some boards to build a shed that the poor things may have a dry place to stand and lie down under with a wind break against the cold piercing storms. These are not only acts of humanity, but they appeal directly to the pocketbook. They make the stacks of hay, the corn fodder and the meal bin go nearly twice as far, to say nothing of increasing the profits of the milch cows.

If a liberal allowance of straw, leaves or other trash is scattered under the shed the amount of manure saved will far more than repay the cost and trouble of collecting it, while it greatly adds to the comfort of the animals. If you are not too tired by this time, then get you a sharp butcher's saw and take the horns off dent from the boss cow and steers, and then the younger ones. This is the best time of year to do it, when there are no flies to bother. — Home and Farm.

Pity the Gold Miner!

1920

One might imagine that if he could discover a gold mine he would have a fortune. But time has brought changes. Among them has come a depreciation in the purchasing value of gold, due largely to the cheap American dollar and to the large flow of gold from abroad during the war.

When prospectors first rushed to Alaska, says the Cleveland Plain Dealer, little trouble or expense was entailed in procuring the yellow metal. Nuggets could be found on or near the surface, and the dust was easily washed out of sand taken from the beds of mountain streams. Now expensive machinery must be employed and "pay dirt" is usually found only after much labor. The results are indicated by the unprofitable business reported by one Alaska gold mining company for 1919.

During the year it cost this company $1,744,869 to produce $1,467,389 worth of gold, leaving a deficit of $277,480, as against a loss from operations the previous year of $96,945.

Those who find cause to complain because of their hard lot since the war, would do well to consider the unfortunate position of the gold miners. They comprise one group which cannot profiteer.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 20, 1920, p. 6.