Keeping one cow / Being the experience of a number of practical writers, in a clear and condensed form, upon the management of a single milch cow

by Various

A WINTER SHELTER.

I had no stable. The cow stood out in all the storms until late in December. The hair grew very thick, almost like a buffalo robe, and she did not seem to mind the cold. There was an old chicken house on the place, standing on posts about five feet high. It was in a hollow, and was sheltered by evergreens on the north and west. As I pulled up her stake one night in a drizzle to let her go under the tree where I milked her, she started on the gallop for this house, and from that time it was her winter couch. There I milked and fed her. I tied the chain around one of the corner posts, so as to leave her the choice of the shelter of the building or of exposure to the storm at her discretion, and I must say that she often surprised me by seeming as fond as a child of standing out in the rain. Under this coop I fed her fodder; the stalks she left, littered down her bed, and I had more manure in the spring than I had ever had before. A boy spread it from a wheelbarrow at twenty-five cents a day. The spring before I paid fifty cents a load for the manure, and two dollars and fifty cents a day for the hauling.