Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 October 1890 — THE STOCK RANCH. [ARTICLE]

THE STOCK RANCH.

Live stock Points. Hogs and poultry fed exclusively on corn are liable to hog eholcfa and chicken cholera. Cause: Indigestion and uonassimilation. Hogs of all ages, even in last stage of fattening, should only have whole corn once in twenty-four hours, inasmuch as it takes them twenty-four hours to digest it; and, therefore, given of toner is the breaking of a well-estab-lished physiological law. The second feed each day may bes ground fet'd, vegetables, or what-not. Poultry especially need variety—a light feed of corn every other day, and then wheat, barley, oats, and buckwheat in turn. If you want eggs, give miik and some bran. Abolish that vile and expensive nuisance, the hog pen. Give your fattening hogs the run of a small clover field,with a roomy shed open to the south, then their food will digest ?.nd assimilate; it will do neither properly In a filthy hog pen, and at least one-third of their food is thus worse tban wasted. Giving the hog pure air, liberty to walk about, and the absence of the filthy hog pen, will certainly give health to the animal, and the pork will be sweeter and more wholesome. Wo cannot put new milk to any more profitable use in late fall and winter than giving three quarts of it per day to a previous spring’s foal, along with its grain. Foals during their first whiter should be kept in open pasture, with a shed open to the south for shelter. The equine race have plenty of wit to keep warm by exercise. So eared for, a liberal feeding of coi n and oats will not injure them. The most faulty management of a foal is to keep it in a warm stable, with high feed, all the winter. 1 have known some very ignorant men keep them tied up all wlnteron a boarded floor! I know one such man who lost three colts in succession by ringbone by that mistake. They wore al) from the same mare. She was a very fine mare—a Vermont Morgan—but had an hereditary tendency to bone spavin. So her colts especially required plenty of liberty and open-air exercise in winter during their growth. Limberness of legs and joints and good lungswill bo got by following the foregoing hint. A month before a cow calves in the spring, if she is fat, or oven in good order, stop all grain, and give potatoes instead, and commence, milking her two weeks before calving. This treatment, by cooling the blood, would have saved the life of many a valuable cow. To prevent horses gobbling up their oats, keep a peck of corn cobs in their boxes. As ground feed given to cattle goes direct ly into the . fourth stomach, it should bo ground for them as fine as a mill can grind it; so ground, the cattle will get more nutrition out of It than if ground coarse. For horses and human creatures it may bo ground coarser.— Cor. Farm, Field and Stockman.