very largely increased home consumption of cheese and the extensive and increasing foreign demand, and further, when we remember that the increase of dairy stock in the United States (large as it has been in the last fifteen years) has been only a little more than the increase of population, and when we remember further, that we cannot extend the dairy ad libitum, as the best dairy section is but small compared with the whole country; I say when we remember these facts, we might well enquire, where is the supply coming from, than where shall we find a market?

Mr. WOOD. I wish to ask what breeds of cattle will pay best for dairying.

Mr. FAVILL. The breed that will "pan out" best, of course is the best breed, as the Californian said of his gold mine.

Mr. BENTON. You spoke of the introduction of cheese and its becoming an article of general use and being more healthy than pork. Tell us at what price per pound one would be warranted in purchasing it to take the place of pork.

Mr. FAVILL. I should say that pork is not fit to eat at all and good cheese is.

Question. In regard to the keeping of cows; you meant one acre of corn was sufficient for each cow, but you failed to tell us whether that corn should be sown broadcast or planted four feet apart, or how.

Mr. FAVILL. I was speaking of corn planted just as we would plant it to raise a crop, four feet apart and about four grains in a hill, and then one acre will keep a cow all the year.

Question. Would it benefit your stalks much to steam them? Mr. FAVILL. Yes. I have tried it and it improves them very much where you have suitable buildings and can do it. To run a steamer you must have some place where it will not freeze. you have suitable buildings it pays richly to steam. will eat every particle, they won't leave a scrap of it. neighbors cuts his stalks and wets them and throws on a little bran or meal, but they are very much better to steam them.

Where Your cows

One of my

Now about the plan of sowing your corn. I have experimented about eight years, and I have got the best results when I was raising simply for the fodder, by just double-marking the ground and planting two feet each way, about four kernels to the hill, then take the wings off the cultivator and cultivate it until it begins to

break down, and then I cease to cultivate. Then it has little ears on it, and it will all get eaten up at once, and it don't hurt cattle a bit to get a few ears of corn. I like that very much better than sowing it broadcast, for if that grows thick it will fall down in the heavy storms.

Question. Have you experimented with the sugar-beets as connected with the dairy business? I mean in regard to the use of sugar-beets for cows and other farm stock. I have tried them and have thought there was nothing that afforded more profit in proportion to the amount of labor invested in their production, either in regard to the treatment of hogs, cattle, or sheep, and particularly milch cows. I make the inquiry in order to elicit attention in that

direction.

Answer. I never tried it personally, but I have seen it tried with the very best results. But here is a difficulty with raising rootcrops. Unless our land is so situated that we can irrigate, we cannot raise roots with success. But we can always raise some cornstalks. But when we can raise roots, sugar-beets are very beneficial indeed. They are valuable if we can get them.

Mr. ANDERSON. I think there is a small portion of every farm on which you can raise sugar beets. One acre will raise an immense quantity planted about twenty-seven inches apart. For a number of years I have raised them on a piece of low, rich, black soil. I sub-soil it down as deep as I can, probably about fifteen inches. I never manured it, but it is close to my barnyard, and in that way it is immensely rich. I raised corn on it one year sixteen feet high. I can make more milk from beets than anything else. I have seen a statement of eighty-two tons of mangles-wurtzels per acre. I think that is immense. About every farmer can raise sugar beets, if he gets good soil. Beets should not be planted too deep, or the land, when it rains, will cover them up when small.

Mr. PORTER. So far as the cultivation of our crops is concerned we all have our own ideas about it, and each man will follow his own ideas. There is one thing connected with stock raising of every description that we all have to consult, and it is upon that I wish to ask the gentleman from Jefferson with reference to what he knows about keeping cows and hiring help to look after those cows. It is not everybody that has good boys to do all the work, and if we have to look to hired help, I think the very best

And if milk

we can do is to make ourselves the head herdsman. and butter raising is to be a success in this state, and we have to rely upon our hired help to abstract that milk and make the cheese and butter, I should wish to have the experience of Mr. Favill, or any other gentleman, in reference to our hired help. For instance, twenty dollar-a-month men for the summer; have you ever found them reliable to feed your cows and treat them kindly, keep them clean, and milk them well without abusing them? I know that the greatest fault in reference to my hired men is, in the first instance, they have high tempers, using a great deal of bad language and a great deal of boot-toe, and making the cows wild and nervous.

In reference to the cultivation of either cheese or butter, we want to try to inaugurate upon our farms a more careful consideration among our hired help. I can send a boy to plow, if I only mind. and give him a good pair of horses, such as he is not afraid will run away. There is something about plowing with horses, where a man can tell if he has done a good day's work, but with reference to milking and managing stock, those men will shirk it.

I have a man I call my foreman, I think I can rely upon him wondefully at times, but at other times I think he is about the worst shirk I ever saw. I think there is a great deal for a farmer to learn in managing his help. That is the worst experience I have had in my farming operations.

Mr. FAVILL. I would inquire if the gentleman has learned to manage himself? I don't know anything about it, but that is very likely to be the trouble. I confess, to a very serious difficulty in this matter. But you remember the remark I made just now. Any person thinking of engaging in the business must count the cost, and that cost would be personal attention. With our dairymen it has come to be understood that the men have got to milk, and to do it as they are directed, or else we don't hire them. I turned off, not long ago, as good a man as I ever had to work, just because he didn't treat the cows kindly, and if they leave me alone with the cows to milk, I will get the calves to suck them before I will have a man around that will ill-treat my cows. I say to them, "if you can't milk without swearing and scolding at the cows, let them alone and I will get somebody else." But we have got to learn to manage ourselves and do the best we can with our men, and yet we will have

trouble with our help.

The more you pay a man the more you

have got to be his servant, instead of his being yours.

Mr. G. E. MORROW. Circumstances have made it necessary that I should give some special attention to dairying for several years. And I want to say, it seems to me that at no time has there been nearly as much interest in the question as now. Take this state especially; I may say certainly at no time have I received as many letters of inquiry as in the last few months where people propose to engage in dairying. I agree with Mr. Favill in almost everything he said, and have frequently made this statement, that for the last eight years I believe that no body of farmers in this state, with the same amount of capital, has made as much money as have the dairymen. And I am heartily in favor of people engaging in it when they first count the cost.

Secretary Field offered the following resolution, which was unanimously adopted:

Resolved, That the thanks of this convention are due and are hereby tendered to the railroad companies of the state who have so generously given delegates reduced fare to and from this meeting.

HORSES.

BY HON. JOHN L. MITCHELL, MILWAUKEE.

I shall start off with the query: What is the most profitable kind of horse for the Wisconsin farmer to raise? Not as a special business, but as an incident to ordinary farming. My own paradoxical ans ver to this question would be: No horse at all. Our prolonged winters and the consequent necessity for expensive housing, costly care and much artificial food make horse-raising in the main a losing affair in this climate. That is, the average horse is not marketable for what he has cost.

Nevertheless, as nearly every farmer has "the old mare," endeared to him by association and a life's labor, having qualities he desires to see perpetuated, the question will still recur to him: What shall he breed, that the manger and the hay-rack may make a return? In a short-sighted way let me look over the ground. Among district breeds there is

THE THOROUGHBRED.

This animal traces in unbroken lineage to an oriental origin. He is created to run; he is bred expressly to carry a light weight in the saddle at great speed, and in this he honors his ancestry. On the turf, the racer usually begins his career at two years of age and ends it any time before six. In this struggle of precocity, our tardy climate would be behind the flag, as against the "Sunny South." For harness and every-day work he is generally too light in frame and too irritable in disposition; he will not tamely submit to drudgery until broken both in body and in spirit. The judgment hereabouts is decidedly against thoroughbreds in their purity. Within my own recollection they have gradually diminished in numbers, until to-day the horse of unmixed blood may be said to have disappeared from this vicinity. Whoever tries thorough-breeding in this region, will find his colts more rapid than his gains.

THE TROTTING-HORSE

has become within a few years almost a distinct type in America. By successive and successful selection, on a beginning of Canadian, Arab and thorough blood, the aptitude to trot is being bred with great and increasing certainty, and we are surely attaining what might be called the thoroughbred trotter; not, however, the trotting thoroughbred, which is quite a different thing. This animal is all the "go" just now, so much so that it is difficult to find anything slower than a three-minute nag. The princely prices paid for accomplished trotters have dazzled everyone, and each is blindly grabbing for a prize. Such men as Bonner will have a long score to settle sometime in the way of broken bones and broken hopes. The scientific breeding, the careful feeding, the cautious breaking, the skillful schooling to the gait, are all lost sight of in the sum total of thousands. "There is a pleasure in the pathless woods," and there may be fun, especially for the boys, in trying to raise a trotter, but I fancy for the farmer the crops will be about the same in both cases. From first to last the production of the high-priced trotter is becoming more and more a profession by itself, and it would be a saving thing for agricultural folks to so understand it.