one another, but, instead, will break up and become smaller. If too low, they will be so hard that they will not adhere to one another. No positive churning temperature can be given for the reason, as told you in the beginning of this paper, that the butter fat from different cows varies in the per cent. of the solid and liquid fats, but it should range somewhere from fifty to sixty degrees.

The churning should be done at as low a temperature as possible and have the butter come in from one-half hour to one hour, as this will insure close churning and firm butter. If the churning is done in less than one-half hour there is sure to be a large loss of butter fat.

The most successful churns are those which contain no internal fixtures. The dash churns, and those which have paddles arranged in them, do not churn as thoroughly, as they do not stir all the cream. The rectangular, barrel and swing churns are all good, but the barrel is the best, where not used every day, because it can be tightened up where it shrinks.

Whatever kind of churn you get, see that it has a good, large opening, so. that it may be easily cleaned, and the butter readily removed; that the cover is securely fastened with a fastener that can be opened readily, and that it has no pockets where cream can collect, as it is sure to become sour and injure the flavor of the butter. If a good churn is used, one that is free from internal fixtures, the cream well and evenly ripened and the temperature kept down so that it will take at least one-half hour to churn, one should not leave over one per cent. of butter fat in the buttermilk.

If a little cold water, or better still, cold brine is added just as the butter breaks, it will make it separate better. The churn should stop when the particles of butter are about the size of a wheat kernel. The buttermilk should then be drawn off, using the hair-cloth strainer to catch any particles of butter that may chance to come away with the buttermilk. After allowing it to drain for a moment about three or four times as much cold water as there is butter should be added and the churn revolved a few times. The water should then be drawn off, using the strainer as before, and allowing the butter to drain quite thoroughly.

Unwashed butter has a better flavor, but will not keep as well; one can wash the flavor all out of butter so that, on the whole, once washing, and never over twice, is best. Butter may be worked in the churn with good results; and it is possible to work it in a bowl with a ladle, but extreme care has to be used not to spoil the grain. Never, under any circumstances, draw the ladle over the surface of the butter, as that is sure to spoil the grain. The most satisfactory way, however, to work butter is with a butter worker. One may be had for five or six dollars, and much better work will be done, as a rule, especially with begin

ners.

market or customer. It is Never use more salt than

Butter should be salted to suit the taste of your usually salted at the rate of one ounce to the pound. will be dissolved in the water contained in the butter before working. Salt that will dissolve very readily in water is the only kind that should be used for salting butter.

The principal foreign substances that contaminate salt are lime and magnesia, and are not easily detected. To detect the impurities inake a strong brine and add a little carbonate of soda, or washing soda. This will precipitate the lime and magnesia, and make a milky looking brine. Salt which attracts moisture in any quantity contains lime. Butter should be worked until all of the salt is dissolved and evenly distributed and the butter has become firm. If the salt is not evenly distributed the butter will have a mottled appearance. Those parts containing the most salt will have the most color.

If the temperature of the butter when working is too high it will be greasy;

if too cold the granules will not adhere to one another. A temperature somewhere between fity and sixty degrees will be about right. Butter should be well cooled before being put on the market. It is also best, on the whole, to dispose of butter while fresh. Try to get it to the consumer within two weeks from the time it is made.

Generally speaking, in farm dairying, one can look up customers, and, by putting the butter up in small, attractive packages, can depend upon an increase over the market price for Elgin butter of about twenty-five per cent. Perhaps the most acceptable way of packing is in prints. One-pound veneer packages can be bought at wholesale for one-half cent each or retail at three-fourths cent each. The print of butter is first wrapped in parchment paper and then placed in one of the packages.

In closing I would say: To make butter on the farm of good quality and in an economical manner it is necessary to have, first of all, cows of the distinctive dairy type, a Babcock milk tester; plenty of ice, a creamery, a good churn, cairy thermometer and a pair of scales. I feel sure that it would be better to replace the creamery with a separator where one has six or more cows.

I do not mean to say that it is impossible to make first-class butter with the dash churn and the shallow-pan system of creaming milk, but the impression I would like to leave is this: That if you want to make butter in the most economical manner they are things of the past, and should not be considered at the present time.

THE ART OF FEEDING AND CARING FOR BREEDING EWES.

BY R. F. REEVES, Albany, O.

[Read at the Farmers' Institute held at Albany, Athens County, December 30 and 31, 1898.]

Looking back over the history of the sheep we shall find that feeding has always been the first part of the process of improvement. This is reasonable as well as indisputable, and we may take it as the first and important part of improvement, and the indispensable preliminary to better breeding. For if characteristics are inherited, as we must believe, then the habit of eating and digesting the largest quantity of the best food, and turning to growth of carcass or fleece, must be the first means of approach to an improved condition and standard. So that feeding must come first and this inheritable aptitude for the making of growth, or early maturity, be made the basis of the improvement desired. Although this view is stubbornly contested by some people, and breeding is placed first in the category of means of improving our domestic animals, it seems that such a view is wholly untenable, and quite opposed by the practice and results of breeding. It is unreasonable as well, for if the breeder's axiom like produces like — is true and well founded, then we must first make the parent what we wish, as far as we can by stimulating the ability to turn good feed into growth, and then, by breeding from these improved feeders, get a progeny upon which we may be able to improve still further in this direction.

Were it otherwise, we should have no starting point to breed from for the improvement of the flocks. Feeding is the main business of the mutton producer. But as it has been shown that the wool is a mere outgrowth of the flesh and skin, partaking as closely as may be of the character and substance of the flesh, we cannot improve the flesh of a sheep without at the same time improving

the fleece. These go together. Every expert knows, and every shepherd should know, that wool is seriously damaged by poor feeding. Every "set back" of the sheep is marked by a weak spot in the fleece and the wool is fit only for the cheapest kinds of products.

The growth is also arrested, and as an example of the need for good feeding for a good fleece, it may be shown that as soon as the sheep is shorn, and the new growth of the fleece calls for extra nutriment, the appetite of the sheep is notably increased, and if it not duly supplied with the quantity and kind of food needed the sheep becomes thin, or if the carcass grows the fleece does not.

It is a fact that in the nutrition of an animal, the elements of the food go first to sustain the vital functions, for an animal will live although it loses flesh and becomes thin and poor. Thus the needs for life will be supplied first, and then the secondary product the flesh is provided for, and last of all the fleece. Every well informed shepherd is fully cognizant of what the French have done in regard to their fine Merinos, whatever sub-names they may go by Rambouillets, Delaines, or Black Tops - and how they have more than doubled the carcass weight, and the weight of the fleece, at the same time lessening the waste of yolk and grease in the wool. And we all know what our own breeders have done with the old Spanish Merino.

These invaluable results are simply the effects of feeding first and last. Of course the breeding has concentrated these results in the best selected sheep, and this has made the improvement permanent by inherited tendency.

We cannot ignore the excellent results of feeding upon the fleece. This is a similar product to the hair of other animals. Every one acquainted with the best breeds of cattle, knows how the hair is softened and increased in thickness upon the skin of those animals having the mellow touch due to the layer of fat immediately under the skin. This is a similar instance to be well considered, for all animals are made of one blood, and amenable to the same natural laws and what happens in the feeding of cattle must apply equally to the feeding of sheep. Profit in sheep farming calls for the most generous feeding, carefully carried through with the utmost regularity as to the quality of food and time of feeding, carefully carried through with the utmost regularity as to the quantity of feeding. A sheep is a restless animal, and it worries if the time of feeding is delayed only a little. Then the shepherd, thoughtless of this habit of his flock, hears the impatient bleating, all of which means the loss of so much to him on account of the loss by nervous excitement and worry of the flock. As a rule we are not sufficiently careful in this regard and thus we do not meet with so much success in this part of our farming or herding. For the sheep under the best management pays three profits the fleece, the lamb and the carcass besides fertilizing the land and increasing the crops, thus enabling the farmer to keep more sheep. A well fed flock is the most pofitable property a farmer can own. Some say the dairy is this, but the sheep take the palm from the cows every time. A cow, if fed only for milk, takes more fertility from the land in a year than ten sheep.

Breeding ewes must have shelter, yet they must get out and "rustle" every day that is not too wet. Precautions must be taken in the feeding of ewes carrying lambs, in regard to the quality of their feed. This should be clean and free from mildew. One special need of sheep is pure air. The sheep yard must be the best drained spot on the farm. The sheep must have a dry foot but equally a dry back and a dry bed.

BREEDING AND CARE OF SHEEP.

BY HON. R. P. FISHER, Decatur, O.

[Read at the Farmers' Institute held at Decatur, Brown County, January 25 and 26, 1899.]

The native country of the sheep is probably unknown, but that they were the earliest domesticated of any of the wild animals there is little doubt, for we find them in subjection to man from the earliest historical times. If we refer to the sacred writings we will find away back, near "the beginning," the passage from which we take the quotation "and Abel was a keeper of sheep"; we also find them frequently mentioned during the patriarchal age, and further along no less a personage than Moses, keeping the flocks of Jethro his father-in-law on the plains of Midian; again, when a great king was to be chosen for Israel in the person of David and diligent inquiry was made as to his whereabouts his father answered, "Behold he keepeth the sheep"; and finally when "old things were about to pass away" and "all things become new" when the Christ, the savior of mankind, had been born, it was to the "Shepherds abiding in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night" that the angels appeared announcing the great event and proclaiming "peace on earth, good will toward men.” But it is to the breeding and care of sheep, not their history, that this paper should relate.

Perhaps no country in the world is better adapted to the raising of sheep than ours; the diversity of climate together with the abundance and variety of the products of our soil render it highly favorable for the breeding and improving of the different varieties of this most useful animal. How then shall we breed and improve them? Does every American farmer who keeps a flock of sheep so breed and care for them as not only to keep them up to their present standard but improve them from year to year? Do one-half or one-third of those who keep them accomplish this much? I very much fear that a careful investigation would compel a negative answer to these questions. It is true that much has been done in improving the different breeds of sheep and many of our farmers deserve great credit for what they have succeeded in doing toward improving the flocks all over the land, but very much yet remains to be done and I think most of us need a great deal of education in these things. An eminent writer on these subjects has said: "Let any one who is in any way acquainted with the laws of degeneration, its causes and its fatal results not only in reference to the stock itself but also as regards the pocket of the breeder carefully investigate the subject and it will be perceived that there still exists a fine field for improvement." I also wish here to cite the methods of Mr. Bakewell, the celebrated founder of the Leicester and other noted breeds of sheep in England more than a century ago. "His breeding animals were in the first place selected from different breeds, these he crossed with the best to be had, after the cross had been carried to the desired extent he confined his selections to his own herds and flocks. He formed in his mind a standard of perfection for each kind of animals and to this he constantly endeavored to bring them." That he was completely successful cannot be denied.

What may we learn from this? Shall the good farmers of our community be told that they all ought to adopt in full the methods of Mr. Bakewell? Certainly not; with the many this would be impossible, with others more favorably situated it would be a life work that few would care to undertake, but we may all learn from the experience of that eminent man as well as from others that in breeding we should always try to get the best and mate them with the best to be had. We may also learn from it that every man should have some type

or standard of perfection to which he wishes to attain and should work at it with patience and a determination to come as near to it as he can.

I will now try to give some ideas of sheep breeding based mainly on experience and will assume that all are beginners, though to all who already have the foundation stock my remarks will apply as well. To the beginner, then, I will say that, having decided to raise sheep, you should look about you carefully and satisfy yourself what breed of sheep best suits your fancy, your farm and your surroundings. Having settled this procure as many ewes as you need for your foundation stock. Be very careful that the ewes are not too old and that they are free from all hereditary or infectious diseases. If you cannot get them of the breed that you prefer, get them of some other breed, for you can, by grading up, do probably as well in the end. When you have secured your foundation stock your next task will be to procure the male with which to mate them and here your very best judgment is again in demand. It is an old and well established idea among stockmen that the sire is half the herd or flock, and this being true it can readily be seen how important it is that this animal should be the very best that your means can procure; he should be of the breed in which you have decided to invest and should by all means be a thoroughbred; he should be a healthy, vigorous fellow of good robust form and free from all deformities and defects. Having now secured your stock you will still find ample room for the exercise of your best judgment in properly mating and caring for them until the appearance of the lambs, and this should be so arranged as to best suit the circumstances of the owner. The usual mating time in this latitude is in November, But, where the surroundings are favorable and earlier lambs are desired, October, September, or even August is often chosen as the best time.

Having now complied with established rules of breeding you will with your first crop of lambs have climbed half way to the top in successful sheep husbandry, and if you will persistently and tenaciously stick to the thoroughbred sire, one after another and year after year, it will not be many years till your flock wili, with other proper management, have become practically if not actually thoroughbred, in fact about as good as the best.

you

But having embarked in this system of breeding, you are confronted with many other cares and duties that will require much thought and wisdom must look ahead. When your first crop of ewe lambs has arrived at breeding age, which is generally in the fall after they are yearlings, the culling and selecting process should begin. Every old, infirm ewe should be thrown out; every young one that is not sound and healthy should be discarded, and if you should be in doubt as to whether you should keep this one or that one give the benefit of the doubt to the other side and throw it out; you would better have a small flock that is right than a large one with many defects, bearing always in mind the old rule that the best is none too good. And here let me remind you that at this time you need another male to mate with your new flock, and do not under any circumstances allow yourself to be persuaded that the old one will yet do. Sell him, he ought to bring a good price yet, but sell him any how and go forth and get another thoroughbred.

You should keep up this grading process from year to year, culling the flock annually, selecting and keeping only the best, discarding and rejecting any that are faulty or unhealthy.

I think that this process of grading up in stock breeding is the best course to be pursued by the general farmer; it is always safe; it requires but little outlay of money and the breeder can always be assured that if he will observe the rules which may be understood by all he will certainly and continually improve his stock.

But what shall we say of the breeding and propagation of pure bred stock?