Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1876 — Stall-Feeding Cattle. [ARTICLE]

Stall-Feeding Cattle.

Stall-feeding, when one is prepared for it, is about as profitable a branch as one can undertake in winter. The requisites are warm, well-ventilqted, welllighted stalls; plenty of room, fresh bedding often and food that is clean and sweet. Corn-meal and hay cut early’ would form the principal" food, varied with a few roots, bran and barley meal. Of course there must be preparation beforehand. It is well to start in a small way. There are doubtless thousands of farmers who could feed a few animals to a large profit who will sell off their farms hay, corn, roots, fete., which ought to be converted into manure and meat on the farm. It is a fact that those who undertake stall-feeding cattle and sheep very seldom give it up, because the profits are so large both in fertilizers and eash. There are farmers in Connecticut who have been in' the regular practice of stall-feeding cattle, sheep and horses for their whole lives since they began business for themselves. According to the Springfield Republican, Geo. W. Jones, of old Deerfield, has nowin his stables forty-seven head of oxen, all Durhams, and so large that they can hardly move their great weight. The heaviest yoke weighs 4,600 pounds, the whole lot averaging 4,000 pounds to the yoke. They are each fed eight quarts of meal and bran daily and all the hay they want. Water is supplied in the manners in pipes. About Christmas these will go to Boston, and then Mr. Jones will stock up for the winter, his usual number being about eighty to ninety cattle, 600 to 700 sheep ana about a dozen horses. Last year he cut 250 tons of hay, which, with seventy-five tons purchased, he fed out. It is plain to see that where so much is fed out to strong, fattening animals a farm may be very soon brought up to a maximum condition of fertility and productiveness. The cattle obcupy a basement well ventilated." If it was not, the great heat generated by so many animals would make the place oppressively warm. The sheep are fed on xne floor above, and Mr. Jones uses all the enormous quantity of manure produced at the stables. He is also a tobacco-raiser to the extent of twelve or fourteen acres annually, and the tobacco he grows brings a better price than that grown by using commercial fertilizers. Here is one farmer who has found that farming pays.— Detroit Tribune. .