You never know just where morels may appear. We found them in our garden once. They come up right among the weeds or dead leaves. I have often found them along forest by-paths, especially in wet weather in spring. They are delectable. Perhaps you have eaten delicately broiled slices of tenderloin of young pig. Morels do not taste like this—they look a little like it—they taste very much better. You taste them.
Coral Fungi.—The coral fungi that I eat look like chunks of pinkish or cream white organ pipe coral. They are fleshy, soft, yet firm enough to keep their shape, and the whole mass is made up of tiny thread-or rod-like parts of many branches. There is a fine one which looks like a cauliflower though more yellow. I have found the pink and creamy ones on fallen and decayed tree trunks in deep, cool woods in midsummer. Others equally good grow in thin woods or open places. They vary in size from chunks as big as a walnut to those as big or bigger than your fist. They need careful cleansing under a faucet. Some cooks soak them first in cold water into which they put a little vinegar or lemon juice. They then fry in butter. Another way is to stew till tender in water with lemon juice in it. Then drain and dress with cream sauce.
Puff-balls.—What country child has not puffed the "smoke" from the hole in the top of the tough-skinned little brown balls they find in the fields in autumn? Children generally believe them to be deadly poison and call them "devil's snuff-boxes." Their life history is very like that of other fungi. The most of the year these flowerless and leafless plants spend underground. They spread in a tangle of fine threads all through the soil wherever they find decaying vegetable matter upon which to feed. When their time comes, little white balls push out and up from the threads. These come to the surface and we know them by their shapes and sizes as our different kinds of puff-balls, mushrooms, or other fungi.
The puff-balls are white and look like fine cream cheese when they first appear. Their business is to ripen their spores, scatter them, and disappear. The brown smoke or dust of the ripe puff-ball is blown about by the wind and finds its way into the earth in time; each tiny spore or grain of dust can start a new mat of threads down underground. When you puff the devil's snuff-box you are doing the plant just the kindness it was waiting for. When a cow steps on a ripe giant puff-ball a great smoke goes up, and the breeze catches the dust. Some of the spores may be carried on the wind or on the cow's foot to far distant pastures, there to settle down and start a new puff-ball colony. It is just so with all the fungi.
All the puff-balls are edible but one of the most eatable is the giant, which is found in August or September in pastures or other grassy places. When right to eat it is grayish on the outside and pure white clear through. In size this giant varies from six or eight inches through to two feet. Specimens of ten pounds' weight are not rare, and there is record of some twice that size. When yellow or brown inside, the giant is past eating.
The pear-shaped puff-ball is the commonest one. This is a sort of dirty brown colour outside, pure white inside. It is found on old wood or on the ground as early as July and as late as October. In size the balls vary from thimble size to that of a big pear. They grow in companies, sometimes scores together.
The brain puff-ball is larger than the pear-shaped. The top is wrinkled or corrugated, and grayish or reddish in colour.
Chanterelles.—Chanterelles are found in late summer in the woods amongst moss where it is damp and cool. They are red or yellow and look as if you had put your thumb in the middle of the top and pushed it down so that the network of gills appear on the outside. The name means a little goblet, and the perfect ones are goblet-shaped. If you go camping in the woods in summer you are almost sure to find chanterelles.
Meadow Mushrooms.—The wild meadow mushroom usually appears in large numbers after the autumn rains have renewed the pastures. They frequently come up alongside of an old dried patch of cow manure. To make myself familiar with this pink-gilled variety I visited a large market where they had them for sale in all stages, from the little round buttons to the big flat broilers which are turning brown. They are just right when the cap has spread so as to burst the delicate white veil which covers the gills. The flesh is white and the gills a delicate pink. The skin peels off easily like that of a ripe peach. Look them over with great care when preparing for the table. The early worm which is on hand to get a first bite of everything sometimes honeycombs the whole plant. The stems of young ones are tender at the top.
Inky Caps.—You never expect to gather your dinner from an ash heap? Neither did I; but in the edge of the woods nearest us the public used to be allowed to dump ashes. It is now overgrown with golden-rod, iron weed and various other coarse plants. A path leads through it. Last fall we discovered that the place was fairly swarming with Coprinus comatus, the shaggy mane mushroom. This does not look like anything else on land or sea and is delicious. Its relative, the inky cap is just as good to eat, but not so handsome. Both melt away into black ink as they grow old. They should be cooked as soon as possible after gathering. We kept some over night once. Such a sight! They looked like black corn smut.
The Coprinæ push up in such tight clumps sometimes that their heads are all out of shape. They rise literally over night. Sometimes one comes up singly and grows tall and perfect, a truly lovely object, pure white, six inches tall, its shaggy head held high, its silver-white gills delicate as tissue paper. A few hours later you will see a ragged bit of pulp rapidly dissolving in a pool of black ink.
Oyster Mushrooms.—The oyster mushroom comes out like the shelf fungi on decaying tree stumps or logs. They are ashy colour or dull white, solid and rather tough, and vary in breadth from two to five inches. As to why they are called oyster mushrooms, opinions differ. The flavour is not oyster-like, though the flesh is about as tough as a boiled oyster. The shape does suggest an oyster shell; perhaps that is the best reason for the name. One edible relative of the oyster mushroom grows usually on decaying elm stumps as late in the year as November.
The first thing to do if you get interested in mushrooms is to get some good illustrated book on them. The chances are that your State Experiment Station has issued a bulletin on the subject. If not you can get those published by the United States Department of Agriculture or perhaps those issued by some neighbouring state. What you want is information on wild fungi, especially the edible ones, not directions about growing the market varieties. When you write for bulletins state just what you are looking for. Pictures, especially photographs, are of the greatest use in identifying specimens. Compare the descriptions and pictures with your mushrooms and do not use them if there is any question in your mind as to what they are. The books mentioned in the appendix of this book have been of help to me.
The harvesting of nature's crops is a most fascinating occupation. As boys and girls we do not ask why; we only know what fun it is. If the time ever comes when you wish to forget that you are grown up, nothing will help you like going into the woods, the fields, or the hedge-rows to help the birds and the little fur-coated animals harvest the crops of nuts or berries or other fruit that grow in nature's orchards. With your sack of nuts or plums on your arm, or your pail full of berries, you can easily forget that you live in a flat or work in an office or a factory.
Some people think when they see how much over-ripe fruit is falling to the ground, and how much more there is than can ever be gathered by human hands, that nature is wasteful. Perhaps this is why these same people and others who did not think at all, have been so very wasteful of our country's natural resources, and brought about such a really alarming state of things in our forests. Those who do stop to think will see that although she is lavish, nature is never wasteful. The berries must decay in order that the seeds may germinate, and in moulding they nourish the fungi which are just as important in nature's eyes, so to speak, as the berries are. Nothing is wasted in nature. On the contrary, everything is saved and is made over into some other form. Nothing stands still; transformation goes on continuously. What was soil yesterday is fruit to-day and is built into our muscles and nerves and brains to-morrow.
Every boy or girl that helps to harvest nature's crops can do a little to assist in our great national work of preserving the country's natural resources. Would you ruin a fine young tree just beginning a life of usefulness? By mutilating it past recognition, you may add a few nuts to your this year's store. But what an injustice you are doing to the next generation of boys and girls. You are robbing them. I have heard men say: "When I was a boy we used to bring home arbutus by the wagon load from Coy Glen. But it's hard to find any there now. It must have winter-killed or blighted." My tongue burned to tell them that they themselves were the blight that winter-killed the arbutus and robbed me of my right to gather a few sprays. They had torn it up by the roots in their greed to fill their wagons, and then they cut out all the trees, and the sunlight destroyed all the shade-loving things.
Boys and girls of a more enlightened generation know better ways and will not leave behind them a record of selfishness.
I am glad to tell the methods by which I have developed a good business in collecting and growing California bulbs, as I believe my success can be duplicated in other parts of the country—in fact, one man already makes a good living by exploiting the wild flowers of the Rocky Mountains, several people are exporting the cacti of our desert, and there are several nurseries in the southern Appalachians for the interesting plants of North Carolina.
In 1870, when I was nine years old, my family moved to Ukiah Valley in north-western California, and there I have lived ever since. My early home was a farm, and my first work to raise hops and a mortgage. My education was such as the district school and an abundance of good reading could give me. At eighteen I began to teach school. I was always a lover of nature and fond of wandering about the hills. In Mendocino County in 1870 the country was just emerging from the cowboy era, and little attention was paid to vegetable gardening, while flower gardens were all but unknown.
There was one notable exception to the indifference to flowers. Alexander MacNab, a Scotchman who had been forced by declining health to leave Glasgow, had found new vigour in California's mountains. The property which he had purchased for a stock range is one of the most picturesque in northern California, and there he built a modest but ideal home. He sent everywhere for flowers, and I know of no place in these later days where more flowers are well grown. He gave to his flowers not only money, but love and himself, and few gardeners were more successful. I often visited there in my boyhood days and the inspiration that I received from this place and from another source determined my life work.
I had a sister a few years older than myself who had been in the East for some years and whose failing health forced her to return to California. She was a flower-lover and soon called upon me to begin a garden on the bare hill where our very plain home stood. It was a work of love, for all of the new soil was carried in buckets, and the water which our hot climate made necessary was carried from a well, but it was a great success. My Scotch friend was most liberal with both plants and instruction, and between the two my bent was well fixed.
It was through Mr. MacNab that I got started in the collection of native plants. Woolson and Company, then of Passaic, N. J., were the first American firm to take up the culture of our native American plants as a specialty. They wrote to Mr. MacNab, asking him to secure the native plants and offering to pay for them in eastern grown plants. My love for flowers had interested me in botany, and it was quite natural that the letter should be turned over to me. In my first letter to Woolson I sent a pressed flower of Colochortus pulchellus and received in return an order for one hundred bulbs, which they said they would pay for in cash. This order was filled and it was the beginning of my bulb business.
My first idea was to earn money to buy plants with, but before long I saw that a small business might be built up.
My progress as a collector went hand in hand with my education in botany. My method was this: First to find something of sufficient beauty to make it probable that it would be wanted; next, to find its name, and then to offer it to some one of the very few firms then interested in such things.
Such was the first stage in the development of a new industry, but the latter was no less important, for it involved knowing the plant at every stage of its growth, finding when it could best be handled, and how best packed for shipment. Almost from the beginning I tried to grow the native plants, and botanical study, collection, and cultivation have gone hand in hand since.
Every year I took longer trips. I went alone, with the lightest of camping outfits, slept on the ground, and penetrated the wildest regions, learning where the desirable flowers grew, and collecting those in demand, at the same time studying the general flora. When I had learned the flora of a region, I tried to train some resident as a permanent collector, for not all of these long trips could be made every year. My horizon fast widened, and through friends, by letters to others, and often by the migration of men whom I had trained, new fields were opened, and later I had men who had been trained under me to send to distant points.
Before I began to collect, others had been in the field, but they were principally wandering botanists who seldom collected over the same ground for two years in sequence. Their collections were of stuff of all grades, often made at the wrong season, and there was no demand except from a few special lists. At first I shared their faults, but after a few years I saw the necessity of making a reputation for reliability, for thoroughly learning the art of packing, and for such grading as would insure uniform quality.
As time went on, collection became less important and culture the central feature of my work.
My first garden was at the farm home; later I spent much time and money in experiments in a reclaimed lake bed near Ukiah, still later at my Ukiah home, and since 1897 in the mountains about eight miles east of Ukiah. Each experiment had its value. No one had grown Californian bulbs in California, and everything had to be learned experimentally. I now have two nurseries. One of them is at Lyons Valley, a lovely spot in the highest part of that branch of the Coast Range which I found six years ago was specially adapted to lily culture. About three quarters of a mile away, at "The Terraces," nature has provided endless variations of soil, climate, moisture, sun, and shade. Here I grow a great variety of bulbs.
In 1886 I sold about seven thousand plants of all sorts; in 1888, two hundred and fifty thousand, and the difference was on business principles.
Carl Purdy
Every farm boy I ever knew was ambitious to own horses. Before my eldest brother was twelve he had traded pigs with our father for calves, then heifers for a horse, and his favourite air castles were great luxurious barns inhabited by blooded horses of his own raising.
If your colt's mother is dutiful, and they mostly are, the youngster will have plenty to eat for the first few weeks. Petting is a good thing for little colts; never a cuff nor a harsh word. Their confidence won, their education is begun. While still dependent on the mother for milk the young colt begins to nibble hay from the manger, and gets a taste of the oats in the feed box, too, and finds them good. Oats and clover hay, a little bran and shorts, a run in the pasture every fine day all winter, will usually keep the colt growing and healthy. A warm stable with plenty of dry bedding, preferably in a stall with another colt, is necessary at night.
Colts need a plentiful supply of cool, clean water in summer, but in winter, water should be heated just enough to take off the chill. It is bad for a colt to drink at meal-time. (That sounds like a rule for boys and girls.) A chunk of rock salt handy for colts to lick at helps keep the appetite normal.
An ordinary farm colt at three or four months old is worth only thirty or forty dollars. Two years later, with the right kind of care and teaching, the same colt will bring four times that price. What other farm crop will do as much?
The mother of a baby colt once died on our farm. My father felt very badly over it; losing the old mare was misfortune enough, but the colt was a noble-looking little fellow, highly bred. We girls had been foster-mothers to almost everything; cats, pups, and pigs were easy, and calves. But what of a colt? "Let's try if we can't raise him on the bottle," said our mother. The experiments we tried with that colt were many. We gave him "half and half" at first—a cup full of milk to one of water. Our small cousin had once been fed on mare's milk, much to our disgust, but it gave us ideas for our colt. Mother read somewhere that cow's milk was not so sweet, but was richer than mare's milk. So we patched our bits of hearsay together and made up our colt's ration about like this:
First week: half sweet milk, half water, a teaspoonful of sugar to each pint, ten times a day—always warm—last feeding at ten P. M.—not very much at a time. Second and third weeks less water, six feedings a day, warm and sweet as before. Fourth to tenth week: increase quantity gradually, give warm—not very rich—milk three times a day. We gave him a bottle at first with a nipple made of a goose-quill wrapped each time with clean, soft rags. Everything about his food had to be kept sweet. We scalded the bottle and the quill and washed them in water and baking soda, just as mother said. Then we taught him to drink from a pail. He followed us about like a dog and was very playful and frisky. We fed him a little hay and oats and grass when he was old enough. My little sister wanted us to give him less milk so that he would grow up into a pony, but when he begged for food, she was the first to go for his bottle. He grew up and developed just like any horse and father said he was the easiest two-year-old he ever had to teach to work. He paid us seventy-five dollars for the colt when he was eight months old and ready to shift for himself with the other colts.
Every boy on the farm ought to have his own particular hobby in the line of stock. It is far easier to keep account of your own if they are entirely different from the animals raised by the other members of the family. An account should be kept with the animals, to learn whether they pay or not. It is only by this business-like method that the young farmer, or the older one for that matter, can know whether his animals are visitors or boarders.
If the mother keeps poultry, the boys pigs, and the father raises horses and cows, then why should not the girls raise sheep? There is room on every fair-sized farm for a flock. There is nothing about the care of sheep that a strong, healthy girl may not do if she is not needed to help with housework. Her father will teach and advise her. Tending sheep is far more healthful occupation and more remunerative than embroidering sofa pillows or knitting "fancy work."
Whoever undertakes the sheep raising must know first some of the needs of his favourites. They are grazers. They will glean a good living in stubble fields and crop grass in pastures where cows would starve; they will bite the weeds in the fence corners down to the quick nor leave one stalk to blossom or set seed. They are among the best and cheapest of lawn-mowers, enriching the ground they feed over. They are easy to care for, as they can take care of themselves most of the year. What a joy it is to take a quiet walk over the hills of a Sunday morning to salt the sheep! They are trustful, playful, docile creatures, and their presence undeniably adds to the picture of content and comfort that every homestead should present.
While it is true that sheep will keep fat on good pasture with plenty of water and a semi-weekly supply of salt, it is not to be supposed that they can pick up a living the whole year round in a cold climate. They do not need stuffing in cold weather, but they do need plenty of good hay in early winter and nourishing food like bran, oats, barley, and clover hay toward spring. Alfalfa is ideal, but many people succeed with sheep who fail on alfalfa. Sheep will over-feed if not restrained. They should have exercise and fresh air in plenty all winter. They should go out every day to pasture, except during storms, until snow covers the ground.
Ewes fed but not over-fed over winter and sheltered under some kind of rain-proof roof will be strong and healthy mothers. A new-born lamb is about as weak and wobbly and inefficient as a human baby. The weakest ones seem bent on dying, but a little coddling and care will put them on their feet. They should be taught how to take nourishment and whoever takes this in hand should use patience and insist that the lesson be learned. I have known of many a good shepherd who sat up late and got up early and visited the sheep at midnight in lambing time and so saved all his lambs. There is something so appealing about a lamb that no owner would like to remember that he slept comfortably through a stormy night while a new-born lamb starved in the presence of plenty or was chilled past help while its mother could only bleat helplessly for the slothful shepherd.
Lambs should not follow their mothers to pasture until the grass is grown enough to be really long and nourishing. They should be out in the barnyard on warm, sunny days, and not weaned until near six months old. After August they will fatten on clover pasture and be ready for market before Christmas.
Sheep are sheared in spring, about April first, but this depends on the climate. Most farm crops are fall or winter affairs. Like maple sirup, wool is a spring cash crop, which is a great convenience. An eight-pound fleece is worth nearly half as much as the sheep it grew on, and the lambs will soon be worth as much as their mothers. So we have a double chance to make good in sheep raising.
Sheep are so hardy, so harmless, and so easily managed that the only wonder is that any farm is without a flock. Men who know say that the farm dog is to blame for this. How about the farm dog, boys and girls? Honestly, now, is your dog worth his keep? No matter how much better he is than the neighbours' dog. How about your dog? You like him, of course, but is he a loafing, worthless, sneaking, sheep-killing dog? Look between his teeth before you deny that he is a sheep-killer. Are you a good citizen if you let such a dog run at large? If you raise sheep you will need a dog, and remember that a good collie will protect your sheep from all the roving, bloodthirsty dogs in the neighbourhood.
Boys, are you really serious about making some money? Do you live on a farm where the hills are too steep to plow and the only crop that amounts to anything is the crop of stones? Are those steep hills covered with brush and good-for-nothing trees that look too hopeless? Don't grind your teeth and say "There's no chance here. I'm going to buy a ticket for the city." Glance at the heading on this page and don't smile derisively nor turn on to some new chapter.
"Goats! Humph!"
If you never heard of anybody making anything out of goats, here's your chance to hear something new. People can and do make money out of goats and so can you. Why, it is too easy!
Here, read these facts about goats:
Goats prefer rough, rocky, wild, and hilly land.
Goats always thrive if allowed considerable range.
Hilly, bushy land is best for goats.
The feed of one cow will keep twelve goats.
Temperature need not be considered. Goats thrive where temperatures are extreme.
The Angora goat fleece is cut annually and is very valuable. We import over one million pounds a year. Skins of common goats are in great demand for leather. We imported sixteen million dollars' worth in 1898 and more every year since.
Goat manure is as valuable as that of sheep.
Angora venison cannot be told from lamb.
Goats scorn to eat fresh grass if coarse weeds like wild carrot, mullein, dock, etc., are in sight.
Every part of a goat is salable. Fleece, milk, cheese, skin, flesh, tallow, bones, hoofs, horns, and manure.
Goats improve land. They are "lifelong scavengers," and can put land covered with useless underbrush into shape for pasture more cheaply and more quickly than dynamite.
A herd of common goats can be built up in a few years. They breed at one year and usually have twins.
Goats are hardy; less subject to disease than sheep.
A good goat is a money-maker.
These statements are quoted directly from the writings of men and women of experience. They have no goats to sell, so you can take their word.
The requirements for successful goat raising are few and easy to provide. They are these:
(1) Space.—Goats do not take kindly to herding nor to small fields. If they have only a small enclosure they are likely spend more time trying to get at what is outside than in browsing. To meet a wire fence every few steps makes a goat restive.
(2) Housing.—Goats must be kept dry overhead and under foot. The shelter for goats should be high and dry. They will not thrive in wet, marshy land, nor keep well if their shed is muddy. They dislike filth and will not stand in it nor touch soiled food. They prefer to sleep on the roof of the barn, you know, but if a clean, dry bed in an airy place is provided they will not roost so high.
(3) Water.—Plenty of clean fresh water should always be available.
If you can supply these three essentials, you are ready to raise goats.
There are two well-marked lines of business in goat raising. Which shall you follow?
Angoras are raised for their fleece; common goats either for leather or for milk. Angoras are not much good for milk and their skins are not so fine nor durable as those of common goats. The Angora is free from the offensive odour of common male goats. The greatest demand for goat products in our markets to-day is for Angora fleece and for common goat skins. The other products, like flesh, hoof, bones and horns, tallow, cheese, milk, and manure, can easily be marketed and should pay most of the expenses. The main products should be clear profit.
There is a slow way and a quick way to build up a herd of goats. As usual the slow way requires less capital. If you have but a few dollars you will have to begin with cheap goats, but to keep a poor goat is poor business. You can buy good, common goats for one dollar and a half or two dollars each and with time and patience build up from them a herd of Angoras by crossing. If capital is easier to command than years of time, you will begin with good Angora does which cost from eight dollars upward. If you begin with common ones, choose white, short-haired individuals. Keep only the best does in your herd for breeders; you will soon learn how to judge them by the quality of their fleece and the price it brings you per pound. In five or six years it is possible to build up a herd of fine mohair producers from common goats.
The hair grows coarser as the goat passes six years of age, so it does not pay to keep one too long. Buy young does. A goat's teeth tell its age up to the fourth year. If all the eight teeth are full-sized the goat is certainly four to five years old, it may be more.
A young kid is not a very sturdy youngster. Good care should be given both doe and kid at this time. A warm shelter should be provided. May is the best month for kids to come, in the North. Extra feeding should be given the doe and plenty of water. If possible each doe with her kid should have a separate stall or pen so that the doe will know her own young one. If you can arrange that each pen in the kid stable can have an outdoor entrance the mother can come and go at will. A board a foot to eighteen inches high across this entrance will keep the kid from following his mother. When about six weeks old the kid will jump this board. By this token you will know that he is strong enough to jump about over the stones wherever his mother leads him.
The comic papers may be right about some things, but they are wrong about goats. A diet of newspapers and tin cans will not keep a goat healthy nor produce a salable fleece of fine mohair. Angoras like common goats are browsers, not grazers like sheep. They eat coarse vegetation such as weedy growths and the twigs and leaves of underbrush, rather than grass. Besides this, particularly in winter, they should have other food. Leaves, table scraps like potato and fruit parings, turnips and other roots, and cabbage are all acceptable if clean. Parings and roots should be washed; if you expect goats to eat swill you deserve to be disappointed. Dirty carrots, rotten apples, sour or mouldy refuse do not tempt a self-respecting pig; much less an Angora. Oats in the sheaf are very good fodder for them. Grain is not required if clover hay, alfalfa, or cowpea stubble is plentiful. Too much grain makes a lazy goat and a lazy goat will not produce a handsome fleece. Bran may be fed for a change, and a little cotton seed or corn may be given, but sparingly. Leaves or other coarse food should be given plentifully at night, as Angoras relish a midnight lunch beside their three square meals a day.
A supply of rock salt should be kept where goats can get it whenever they want it. If it is given only at long intervals they may over-indulge. Water should be warmed slightly in winter if practicable.
Hardy as they are, goats cannot stand exposure to storms. They abhor wet. Cold rain or sleet storms are really dangerous to their health. Goats will go the long way round every time rather than get into mud. Mud is very bad for the fleece, too. Buyers refuse to pay for dirt.
Goat shelters should be dry, but they need not be tight except overhead. In fact many goats die of suffocation when huddled in close quarters. If the roof is just high enough from the floor for goats to go under, it can be open all round except perhaps on the side where the prevailing wind and storms would beat in.
No other animals should be quartered with goats. Experience shows this.
Goats prefer hard beds. Chaff or straw enough to absorb the liquid manure is all that should be put on the floor. Trees are the best shade from the hot sun, but if none are growing in the goats' pasture other shelter should be provided.
It is true that goats thrive best when unconfined. But this does not mean that your goats should be allowed to range on other people's domains. They are a very real nuisance in orchards and gardens, and if your place is small it is no place for goats. A fence need not be very high to restrain a flock of goats. They are climbers and once in a while there is one who would take a prize for the "high jump." Ordinarily a fence three and a half feet high is all that is necessary. Boards, rails, or wire will make a good goat fence. It should go close to the ground to prevent crawling under. If wire is used, take care that the mesh is too small for a goat's head.
You must take your market's demands into consideration when deciding whether to breed Angoras or common goats. An Angora fleece weighs from four to eight pounds. This can be cut every year for ten or twelve years. The common goat's skin is valuable, but he has only one! This makes the Angora look like the best business proposition, although requiring more capital to start, as the care required is about the same and the value of by-products practically equal.
Two arguments may be brought forward in favour of the common goat. In the first place, the herd increases much faster as the Angora doe usually has only one kid, while twins are the rule with common goats. There is a decidedly growing demand for goats' milk near large cities, especially for hospitals. We all know how commonly goats' milk is used in foreign countries. We Americans have a rather silly prejudice against it, but we will get over this when we realize how often goats' milk saves the lives of babies and invalids. The following statements are vouched for by physicians and others of experience:
Goats' milk is more easily digested than cows' milk.
Analysis shows goats' milk has a marked similarity to human mothers' milk and is more readily assimilated by infants.
Goats' milk is generally claimed to be free at all times from germs of tuberculosis.
Cannot be told from cow's milk by taste.
Excellent for coffee and in cooking.
The goat is claimed by its friends to be greatly the superior of the cow for milk, for the following reasons:
The goat is naturally cleanly.
The goat is easy to keep clean because of her small size. Goats can be and are put into tubs and scrubbed and sterilized when being used as foster-mothers in baby hospitals. But no such treatment is possible with a cow.
A goat can easily be taken from place to place with a family. A cow could not be transported without great expense.
Goats eat far less than cows. Eight milch goats can be kept on the food of one milch cow. The same quality of food should be furnished.
I believe there is a great future in America for the milch goat.
In January, 1902, I bought seventy-five Angoras, as I had about twenty acres of brush land that I wanted to reclaim. I kept the goats in sheds until May. I had to put up a wire fence to keep them from visiting my neighbours, and in early May turned them into the first section, about one half of the piece. I built a shed for them to stay in nights and during rains.
The work they did was marvellous. In less than a month this section had the appearance of having been struck by a cyclone, and it was evident that the goats would soon require more territory. Consequently I wired the other section of this twenty-acre piece, and when finished allowed them the range of the other piece, to which they marched in military precision daily, returning to the shed at night or during the approach of rain, which they seemed to foretell as accurately as a barometer. It was not long before it developed that they would require fresher fields or I must reduce my flock, as this ground was all that I had of that kind. Consequently I sold all but twenty-five, retaining twelve registered does, twelve kids, and one buck. For the does I paid ten dollars each, and my buck, which was a kid, cost twenty-five dollars. I had some grades that I sold at eight dollars and eight dollars and twenty-five cents each, and also some wether kids that I sold at five dollars each. I have this same flock now, with the addition of ten kids born this spring from these twelve does, which had twelve kids, two having died, leaving thirty-five now in the field.
During the past winter I have handled more than six hundred that were sent here from the West. The test that I was anxiously watching for at the advent of spring was to see the effect of their work done last season, and I must say I am very agreeably surprised. In the first lot fenced there is scarcely a brush left, no briers, and not even Canada thistles. The entire field between the rocks came out this spring with beautiful, thick, green, grassy foliage, mostly white clover. On the other lot, part of the brush tried hard to show its tenacity of life by coming out with green leaves, but at this writing the shrubs have fallen prey to the devouring Angora, and green grass is coming out in about all the ground that they have trod. This alone to me is a satisfactory commercial experience.
W. O. Corning
Feeding the calves is always the boy's job or the girl's. Usually the milk is prepared by their mother, but the responsibility for the calves' welfare is left to the youngsters. If you look upon calf feeding as nothing but a chore to get over with as soon as possible, you get very little fun out of it. But if you see in those calves the beginning of your own fortune or the foundation of your college fund they look different. Whether the calves are yours or your father's, they are living creatures, capable of appreciating proper care and repaying it. They are just as capable of showing neglect.
If you are going to feed the calves, make a study of calf nature, know what kind of animals you want to make of them, find out how to accomplish your purpose, and then keep a straight course. Find out first the parentage of the calf. Then inquire if it is to be a beef animal or a dairy cow. Knowing its past and its future you can provide wisely for the present.
A new-born calf should stay with the mother from twelve to twenty-four hours. The fluid she gives first is not milk, but is just what the calf needs to prepare its digestive organs for milk. If left longer with the mother it will be more bother to train. The calf should be fed sweet, whole milk for two weeks. If put immediately onto a diet of skim-milk, indigestion is likely to result, and the calf gets a setback from which it may never recover.
When a young calf is taken from its mother, it knows nothing about drinking. The best practice is to let it fast for from twelve to twenty-four hours till it gets good and hungry. It is then in a state of mind to learn anything rather than go without any longer. [They treat human babies the same way if need be.] If started right, a young calf learns to drink in a day or two. Holding the pail with one to two quarts of warm, fresh, whole milk in your left hand, stand beside the calf and put your right hand over its nose. Insert two fingers into its mouth. Did you ever feel anything so funny? The calf will suck your fingers hungrily. Gently push its nose down into the warm milk with your fingers still in its mouth. After a while gently pull out one finger. If he misses it put it back and later try again. In a few lessons the calf will drink readily. Patience and kindness must be exercised if one little scamp proves dull. A calf that gets a slap for not drinking will come to think that the two disagreeable things always come together and his education and his growth will be delayed.
For the first ten to twelve days the calf should have about five quarts of milk a day, divided into three feedings. This should be warmed to blood heat, ninety-five to a hundred degrees Fahr. At two weeks you can begin to substitute skim-milk. A half-pint a day at first is about right. Watch the effect on the calf. Increase the quantity gradually, until at a month or six weeks old the calf is getting seven to eight quarts per day of skim-milk, always warm and perfectly sweet.
The worst disease of calf-hood is scours, and this disease is caused by feeding cold, unclean, or sour milk. I'd be ashamed to have a calf of mine sick with the scours! To cure it, add lime-water to the milk or mix a teaspoonful of dried blood in a small amount of water, then stir into the milk. Or an ounce of wheat bran or kaffir corn meal stirred into the milk will be helpful. Some recommend oat or corn meal fed dry, or a little linseed meal mixed in a little water and then stirred into the milk.
If your calves are all heifers to be added to the dairy herd, you do not want them to lay on great amounts of fat, but to grow strong and be able to digest great amounts of hay. If they are to be beef, they need more fat. Grain is fattening, especially corn. Begin to feed hay as soon as the calf will take it. Clean, dry clover is best, but any good hay will help prepare their stomachs for the work which is expected of them later. Milk and hay are best for growing calves. Grain, oil-meal, and pasture furnish variety.
Have you seen a wild-eyed cow being literally dragged behind a wagon, scared past endurance and behaving like a savage creature? There is not the slightest excuse for that sort of thing. What fun it is to slip a halter on a calf to-day and let him get accustomed to it; to-morrow lead him about a little with coaxing. In a few days he will lead like an old horse. He will learn to expect only kindness from his feeder and trainer. It would be well to accustom the calves to the presence of your dog, too. There are men who think a frightened animal is a humourous sight. But such a man is "no gentleman" and I certainly would never think of trusting him to drive my horses, or milk my cows, or even feed my pigs.
Our calves were kept in an old orchard, convenient to the house, with good pasture, plenty of sun and shade, and a suitable fence. A shed for wet weather is essential, for a clean, dry bed must be provided. Calves have no way of cleaning themselves, therefore they must not be allowed to get dirty.
Milk should be fed until the calves are four months old, and may be continued longer. After the first few weeks, when they have begun to take some hay and grass, the milk may be given in two feedings. Water should be given freely especially in hot weather. If your pasture has a clear running brook, your calves are in luck and so are you, for carrying water for a bunch of calves is no joke. A garden hose or a series of v-shaped troughs from pump to pen saves a lot of time and backache.
A calf whose mother has a record for milk rich in butter fat and a sire of good family has in it the possibilities of a prize-winner. Whether she will earn seventy-seven cents a year over and above her keep, like those one thousand and twenty poor cows that Illinois boys and girls know about, or thirty dollars a year, like the twenty-five good cows, depends very much on the care she gets. No amount of care given to a cow will make up for neglect to the calf. There's a big responsibility on the boys and girls of the farms, for calf feeding is their job.
The suggestion that the suburban home might be a money-making investment would strike the average suburbanite as ridiculous. But a few moments of careful calculation may put preconceived notions to flight and show how considerable money may be made—or saved, which is quite as important.
Some years ago a family, which included two boys of eleven and thirteen years, took a house in the outskirts of a good-sized town, about thirty minutes' ride from the city. The father was a buyer for an importing house, and absent from home for several months of each year. His salary was large, as such salaries go, but there were seven children to be raised and educated, several of them with marked abilities that needed the very best possible instruction to bring them to their highest development.
The boys spent one summer vacation at the country house of an old friend of the family and got ideas. They talked them over, went back to their friend for counsel, then turned their batteries on their parents to gain their consent to an important new enterprise.
Attached to the house was about an acre of ground, three fourths of which was old pasture grown to weeds and a tangle of brier bushes.
By promising to work for a farmer during the coming vacation the boys arranged to have the field, which they cleared and made ready, ploughed, harrowed, and marked in the most thorough fashion.
They planted it with the best variety of mid-season sweet corn. The farmer cultivated it, and the boys hoed it and kept it in almost perfect condition.
The season was very dry, but they laid a hose so as to start a stream of water into the lines between the rows of corn; then with a good pump they filled the trenches they had dug and completely irrigated the entire field.
The crop was a great success. The boys picked and sold at retail prices to private customers twelve hundred dozen ears of the finest corn raised in that section. As it averaged twenty cents a dozen, it footed up the very comfortable sum of two hundred and forty dollars with small ears and left-overs quite sufficient for the use of the family.
Two weeks from the first picking the stalks were cut and set up to cure for the cow that was really the object of their endeavour.
The friend of the family selected the cow. She was a fine, fresh, young Jersey and Alderney cross—a high-grade animal, good for quality as well as quantity of milk and cream.
There was small, well-built barn on the place, and here the cow was stabled. Cleanliness was the first, last, and intermediate law in and about the place. The boys had clothes expressly for barn wear and white aprons with long sleeves to put on when milking.
Such unusual attention to details attracted customers until the demand went far ahead of the supply.
For the first six months the cow gave, on an average, sixteen quarts a day, fourteen of which were sold to persons who came for it, thereby saving all trouble and cost of delivery. Two quarts were kept for the family.
For the next four months the sales were twelve quarts a day. Feed for the cow cost one dollar a week, besides hay and corn-stalks.
The cow was bought late in July, and by the first of August the milk trade was well established. After ten months' experience the boys made up a statement to show to their father when he returned from a trip to Europe.