SHELTERING' STOCK. We provide our selves with comfortable clothing in winter to ward off the effects of cold. We eat fat meats for the same reason. The more northern and colder the climate, the more of fatty substances are consumed. The Esquimaux drink train oil. These substances contain much carbon, and car bon produces heat. Farm stock in the winter crave oily grains, as corn, for the reason that they assist in keeping up the animal heat. Is it not poor economy, in view of these facts, to let your cattle, colts and sheep winter at the lee side of some bleak hill, or in the fence corners, when a little time and money expended at odd times would provide them with comfortable stables, or at least, with warm sheds? The money paid for this will pay for itself each season, to say nothing of the satisfaction of knowing that you have done all in your power to make your farm stock as comfortable as possible. The farmer knows full well that a plant once stinted while young, can never after recover to fully develop itself. It is the same with live stock, only in a greater degree. If allowed to stop growing and get thoroughly poor while young, they never, how ever well fed thereafter, fully recover. Our most successful and most money-making feeders continue to feed liberally from younglings to maturity. It will make a pig as heavy at ten months old as he would become, under ordinary feeding, in eighteen, and the full fed steer will be as heavy at three years, as the lighter fed one will be at five. It takes a certain amount of waste to supply the animal economy, and the waste is in proportion to the length of life. It cots just twice as much to prolong this waste two years as it does one, and more goes to waste in cold weather than in warm, hence the econo my of prodiding warm shelter and plenty of food Animals so provided will be sleek and healthy, while the others will be gaunt and shivering, and their coats staring. Stablemen understand the economy of keeping fine horses warmly clothed in winter. It is only another name for preventing waste. Too many ordinary farmers fail to see it. Try sheltering your stock one winter and see bow you and they like it. We know of no experiments having been under taken in the West with a view of determining this question accurately; that is, under different given ranges of the thermometer. We do know, however, that animals kept in stables when the temperature is at fifty degrees, have their coats soft and sleek, and that as the temperature falls below forty degrees, their coats begin to get rough and staring. A rough coat, however, is not always indicative of ill health; for an animal may be kept in good health out of doors in the winter, if it be provided with shelter where it may be protected from the direct force of tbe wind, and against storms of rain and sleet. Nev ertheless it is always at the expense of an extra quantity of food, and this in just proportion to the temperature, force of the wind, or the effect of rain ou the animal; for the escape of animal heat is in just proportion to the effects of, the conditions mentioned above, and this wasted heat must be kept up by an extra supply of car bonaceous food Hence the well-known maxim, stock can not be wintered in the West on hay and straw, when exposed to the inclemencies of the weather. On the other hand, John Johns
stbn, the well-known farmer of New York State, long since asserted—and this is well known to practical men—that lie could keep his cows in milk during the winter, on good sweet hay, by attending to the warmth of the stable. A cer tain portion of the food eaten by animals is con sumed in keeping up the vital warmth; another portion in supplying the natural waste of tissue, etc., the rest goes to make flesh and fat. So, food is consumed in due proportion to the waste of heat, from low temperature or exposure. Ex periments made some years ago in the compara tively mild, or rather equable, climate of Eng land, is thus stated: One hundred sheep were fed in a shed twenty pounds each of Swedish turnips per day; another hundred in the open air or field were fed twenty-five pounds each per day; and yet the former on one-fifth less food had gained at the end of a few weeks three pounds each of flesh more than the others. Five sheep were fed in the open air between the twenty-first of November and the first of Decem ber, consuming ninety pounds of food per day, the temperature being at forty-four degrees At the end of this time they weighed two pounds less than when first exposed. Five sheep were then placed under a shed in a temperature of forty-nine degrees. At first they consumed eighty-two pounds of food per day; then seven ty pounds; and at the end of the same time as the others, they had gained twenty-three pounds. Again, five sheep were placed in a shed as before, and not allowed to take exercise. They ate at first sixty-tour pounds a day, then fifty-eight pounds, and increased in weight thirty pounds. Thus it will be seen that the first lot on the largest amount of food lost flesh, and that additional warmth not only decreased the amount of food eaten, but they increased largely in flesh. Our experience is that animals for fattening will thrive best in warm and moderately dark stables. And however cheap or abundant the forage, it pays to provide warm shelter, whether for stock or fattening animals. This fact is more notice able with milch cows than with other stock. We have known them to shrink fully one-half in their mess from being inadvertently exposed to a cold storm of rain; and they did not regain their full flow of milk again for several days after tieing again placed in the stable.