CHAPTER X.

TENNESSEE AS A DAIRY STATE.

In a foregoing chapter, we have spoken of the aptitudes of the soils of Tennessee for the production of valuable grasses. It would almost follow as a necessary consequence that it has natural advantages for the economical production of butter and cheese. This subject deserves the attention of every one interested in the productive industry and wealth of the State. The fact is generally known that all kinds of farm labor are not equally profitable, and the thoughtful owner of the soil has to consider the question, what crops will pay him best, taking every fact and condition into account. In bringing dairy husbandry before the public for consideration, our object is to diversify our agriculture, not to disparage the planting of cotton, tobacco, corn, or any other crop, nor to discourage wool-growing, stock-raising, or the production of fat animals, like hogs, cattle and sheep, for meat. Rightly understood, every branch of tillage and of husbandry adapted to our climate and soil, may be regarded as a member of one family, a friend and near relative, which should never be treated as a stranger and an intruder, to be resisted or driven out. Last year, Great Britain consumed over thirty million bushels of corn grown in the United States, and eighty-five million pounds of our cheese. Tennessee corn was not worth fifty cents a bushel, generally, to the farmer to send to any foreign market; that is not one cent a pound; but good cheese, such as is made in Ohio, sold readily from thirteen to fifteen cents a pound at wholesale. If we can produce cheese, and one pound is worth from twelve to eighteen pounds of corn, it is plain that there will be a great saving in the cost of transportation to export our corn to Europe in the shape of cheese and butter, rather than in the form of grain.

The idea of sending grain, grass, fodder and other forage to market in the form of fat animals, or in the shape of young mules and horses, is not new to our readers; but not many have had facilities for properly studying the question, whether the vegetation of the farm will not return more profit if transformed into butter and cheese of the first quality, than if sold in bacon or any live stock. If we carry our dairy industry no farther than to supply the home demand for cheese and butter of northern manufacture, it will be one step in the right direction. Do this, and the fact will soon be learned, that while some southern farmers prosper by raising cotton for the factories of England and Scotland, other southern farmers may do even better by producing cheese and butter at from twelve to thirty cents a pound, to feed in part the operatives who card, spin and weave this cotton. The beauty of dairy husbandry is, that little or no plowing is needed. A field that has yielded excellent grazing for cows every year for half a century, is just in its prime, needing perhaps a little bone-dust or land plaster. There are Bermuda and blue-grass pastures in the south which are as old as the federal government, and without re-seeding or any cultivation-being generally in commons near cities and villages-they yield annually a liberal quantity of milk to thousands of families who pay nothing for this grazing.

Augusta, Georgia, was the capital of that state in the last century, and its large common has been well set in grass about a century. If the more southern climate of Georgia permits a dense turf to form and last so long on rather poor soil, naturally, even when hard tramped and close fed, it is absurd to believe that the climate of Tennessee is less favorable to any grass-growing or dairy purpose. So far as there is a deficiency of the best American and European grasses as they may be found in Kentucky, Ohio, New York and England, the defect is due, not to our forbidding sunshine, or lack of rain, but to the general belief that planting pays better than anything that grass can be turned into on the farm. If a cow-pasture or sheep-walk required as much cultivation and labor as a crop of cotton, from year to year, this opinion might be well founded. But there are pastures set in grass four hundred years ago, when Columbus discovered America, that still grow luxuriantly in England and on the adjacent continent, without any breaking of the sod or tillage whatever. In January, 1874, good butter sells in Nashville, New York, and London, at thirty-five cents a pound. A fat hog sells at five cents a pound in Nashville. It takes grain and plowing to make the five cents per pound porker, but not

the butter, worth just seven times as much per pound. Either our people, Europeans and northerners, do not know the relative value of meat, grain, and dairy products, or we should plant and plow less, have more land in grass, and reap our share of the wealth that flows from

the skillful manufacture of butter and cheese.

Several cheese factories are in successful operation in North Carolina, and two are in contemplation in this State-one in East Tennessee and the other near Nashville. Experience proves that wherever the soil and climate will permit corn to grow, cheese and butter can be manufactured at a profit at present prices for good articles. Very poor butter, cheese and meat are unprofitable staples to produce, and that sort of industry should cease. But when we consider the fact that there are three hundred and fifty million people in Europe and America to be fed, and remember how many careless and stupid men and women there are in the world employed in husbandry, we need not be surprised to learn that, while there may be a surplus of mean butter and cheese, and of badly fattened or badly cured meat, prime articles sell at a reasonable profit to the intelligent and careful husbandman. The principle of association, carried into the dairy business first in the State of New York, and since adopted in England, Switzerland, and other countries, has wrought great improvements, and served to kill the market for inferior butter and cheese in all large cities. Agriculture, by close study and earnest efforts to excel, has become not merely a rude industry, but a fine art; not only an intelligent profession, but a highly cultivated and advanced science. The farmer wants to raise food that will give the toiling millions pure and healthy blood, at the least cost to them, and at a profit to himself. Food must sustain life, health and warmth. To do this with the greatest economy of labor, capital, and satisfaction to all parties, the dairy cow comes in as an indispensable agent, and an indispensable factor in the problem. Allowing her to give only ten pounds of milk in the morning, and the same quantity in the evening, for 200 days in 365, the yield in a year is 4,000 pounds. As a quart of milk weighs about two pounds, ten pounds at a milking requires only five quarts, while some cows give twice that quantity; and it is rare that a good milker goes dry 165 days in a year if she has proper attention. What is the value of 4,000 pounds of new milk as compared with the beef that can be made on the same amount of cowfeed? As we have avoided an exceptional case in favor of milk, we will do the same in reference to beef, that the comparison may be just. An average three-year old steer or heifer may give 600 pounds

of meat, estimating the hide as a part and f equal value. This assumes in substance that a dry cow will give 200 pounds of beef on the feed that might produce 4,000 pounds of milk. If we take ten pounds of fresh corn-beef, free from bone, and dry it perfectly, it loses seven and a half pounds of water, weighing when dry only two and a half pounds. Twenty pounds of milk dried in the same way weighs just the same as the meat, having lost seventeen and a half pounds of water by evaporation. From these facts, it follows that a cow or steer must return for food consumed 2,000 pounds of beef in 200 days to equal in dry nutrition matter that supplied by a dairy cow in the same length of time. If the curd, butter and sugar in new milk are worth as much, pound for pound, as good beef, excluding all moisture in both, but including the natural bone and fat in beef, then grass, hay, grain, fodder and roots, will yield mankind just ten times more healthy blood for human veins in cow's milk, or in butter, cheese, and milk-sugar, than in beef. Viewing dairy husbandry by the light of these facts, the reader will understand why it is fast driving the raising and fattening of cattle out of the best farmed districts of New York, New England, old England, and Europe. When a first-class cow gives ten quarts of milk twice in twenty-four hours, her yield per day is equal to twenty pounds of lean, fresh meat, in solid matter. The relative value of a pound of dry milk and a pound of dry meat is worth considering, as the question affects both meat and dairy production. Not only the young of gramnivorous animals grow rapidly on milk, like calves, colts, lambs, and pigs, when liberally supplied, but the young of all carnivorous animals, like lions, tigers, and wolves, take their meat in the liquid form by sucking their mothers. The young of the human species is no exception to this general law. Milk is improved blood to promote the rapid organization of animal parts in early life. It is highly nutritive when its water is reduced one-half to bring it down to the standard of all fresh, lean meat. This separation of water is an easy process.

In 100 pounds of cured cheese the consumer buys seventy-five pounds of nutritive elements, including those that support respiration and animal heat; in 100 pounds of lean meat (muscle) he buys between seventy-five and seventy-six pounds of water, and less than twenty-five pounds of the elements of nutrition. If the steak or mutton-chop is worth ten cents a pound, the cheese should sell for thirty. But it has been shown that milk production is now so largely developed in the best cows, they having been milked for unknown thousands of years

before the time of Abraham, cheese can be made cheaper per pound than beef. There is less labor in the production of beef than cheese; yet the whey left from cheese-making, and the skim-milk left, including butter-milk, in making butter, are compensating items in the dairy business. Concentrating milk by gentle heat applied to large quantities in vacuum pans pays quite as well as to remove water and deliver the valuables in cheese, in butter and in sugar. As dried meat keeps much better than undried, so condensed milk may be preserved as easily as dried fruit. Eggs and oysters are dried and kept in good order for any length of time. The cheap and large manufacture of ice has an important bearing on dairy industry in the southern states. The cooling of dairy rooms is now well understood, and practicable at small cost. We should not hesitate to avail ourselves of these improvements no more than of steam engines, power looms, reapers, steamboats, railways, telegraph wires and electric batteries. A cheese factory is a new agricultural battery.

How to charge this battery is a question in agricultural engineering on which we will venture a few hints, drawn from the best authorities. Mr. La Mont, who has been engaged many years in the manufacture of cheese in Tompkins county, New York, raises forty tons,. dry weight, of good corn-fodder on five acres at one crop. He finds this corn-hay equal to that made from timothy or herds-grass; while the yield being eight tons to the acre, is four times larger on any given surfaces. In three-fourths of the counties of Tennessee, by planting the earliest varieties of corn, two crops for fodder can be raised in succession on the same land within six months. This is impracticable in all the northern states, and as they all find corn, hay, and green blades and stalks the cheapest feed for dairy cows, it is easy to see that our cotton climate, properly understood and utilized, will keep more cows to the acre, and yield more milk, butter and cheese to the ten acres or one hundred, than the dairy farms of New York worth $100 per acre, or those in England worth five times that sum in gold. Milk comes directly from the blood of the cow, and is one form of her blood, of which, strange to say, some cows have given sixty pounds in twentyfour hours. Such cows are all stomach, which is usually very large, as well as its other digestive and assimilating apparatus. The machinery which extracts first-class cheese and butter from green cornstalks and leaves is very simple and easily managed. Carrots make rich, yellow butter and cheese. Twelve hundred bushels of carrots have been grown on an acre, but 600 may be relied on with fair sea