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Show Dairy Barn and Yard. In locating a dairy barn care should be taken to have a gentle slope from the barn in at least one direction, affording af-fording good natural drainage for both barn and yard. If the barn is already built and poorly located, draining and grading will do much to remedy the evil. In most cases it would take but a small amount of labor with plow and scraper, when the ground is in suitable condition to handle, to give the surface of the yard a slope from the barn sufficient to carry off the surface water. Even if dirt has to be hauled in from outside out-side the yard to accomplish this It will not be expensive. The drainage alone under a yard is not sufficient, as the tramping of the cattle soon puddles the surface, preventing the water from passing down to the tile. After the grading is done the yard should be covered with gravel or cinders. cin-ders. By putting the coarser in the bottom and the finer on top a good hard yard can be obtained and at a comparatively small expense where material of this kind is available. If this cannot all be done in one year, it is of the .utmost importance that a beginning be-ginning be made by grading and graveling grav-eling a portion of the yard next the barn, so that the cows may have some place on which to get out of the mud and filth. By grading a part of the yard each year and applying a thick coat of gravel or cinders to the graded part, the entire yard will, in a few years, be in good condition. When gravel does not contain enough clay to pack hard, a small amount of clay should be mixed with the top layer. It will then form a firm surface. A portion of the yard should be bedded, bed-ded, thus affording the cows a place to lie in the open air on pleasant days. If straw is scarce the cleanest of t' e soiled bedding from the stable will answer for this purpose. When the straw and manure on this bedded por- uon oi the yard become too deep and soft it should Le hauled into the field and the' bedding commenced again on the solid yard. W. J. Fraser. Getting the Most for Milk. From the Farmers' Review: My experience ex-perience with a creamery began a number of years ago. I was in debt for my farm, had ground to clear, fences to make and buildings to put -op, and, Go the best 1 could, it wras a losing game. I came to the conclusion conclu-sion that the thing to do was to get where competition was not so strong. We had some cows, and began milking milk-ing them, taking the milk to the creamery, which brought in something some-thing every month. After trying it a while it seemed like worth holding on to so I got a well-bred Jersey bull, have kept one ever since and now my young cows look like fine full-blood full-blood Jerseys, and some of them are as good. The creamery was destroyed de-stroyed by fire after two or three years and it was a year or more ifr fore they rebuilt. In the meantime I had to do something with my milk, so began making butter for private trade, I purchased a U. S. Cream Separator, Sep-arator, tread power and Babcock milk tester, and went at it in a scientific way, letting the creamery go. I now have a large butter trade, am getting a good price for my butter, and the cream I have over, after filling my orders, or-ders, goes to the ice cream trade in summer and In winter the extra butter but-ter is shipped. If any are not situated sit-uated so they can make first class butter, take your . milk to a creamery, cream-ery, where they can make fine goods, rather than put on the market an inferior in-ferior grade that cannot get above the grocery store prices, which are always the lowest. T. A. Bloomfield, Brown County, Illinois. |