CALVING AND AFTER-TREATMENT.
On the eighteenth of May, her bag began to swell, and became feverish. A quart or two of watery milk was drawn at intervals of eight hours for the next three days, and the udder was bathed as often in tepid water, and gently but thoroughly rubbed with goose oil, in which camphor-gum had been dissolved. Each day, also, she was given a quarter of a pound of Epsom Salts, dissolved in a quart of “tea” made from poke-weed root (Phytolacca decandra), which all druggists now keep in store; this was administered as a “drench,” from a bottle, her head being held up while she swallowed it. On the morning of the twenty-second, being two days overdue, she calved, having a hard time, but producing without help a fine large heifer. Very soon after, I gave her a bucket of cool (not cold) water, in which was stirred a quart of wheat bran, a half pound of linseed-meal, previously scalded, and a handful of pulverized poke or garget root. This mess was repeated at noon, and the bag milked dry. A little later, the after-birth naturally passed off and was removed. The udder remained hot, knotty, and so tender that when the calf sucked I had to protect it from the mother’s kicks, and also to prevent it from taking one teat which was extremely sore. From this quarter I carefully drew the milk with one of a set of four “milking-tubes,” which I bought two years ago to do my milking, but soon discarded; here they came in use, just the thing wanted, but one as good as four. At night I milked dry, gave a dose of half a pound of Salts, with one ounce of Nitre, and a warm Bran-mash. The bag was well rubbed as before. The cow ate some hay during the night, and a few cabbage sprouts in the morning. That day (twenty-third), she was on the pasture a little while, and had a full bag of milk, but still hot and tender. The calf was separated from the cow at daylight, and allowed to suck four times during the day, the bag being milked dry, and then oiled and well rubbed every time. The bowels appearing to be in a sufficiently active state, appetite improving, and her eyes natural, the physic was discontinued, the cow allowed to eat grass and hay at will, and for several days the calf sucked at daylight, noon, and dark, the milk left by it being all drawn. The bag was rubbed and anointed two or three times a day, and a little extract of Belladonna added to the oil used. Under this treatment the inflammation gradually subsided. As soon as the cow would allow her calf to take the tenderest teat, I kept it on that side as much as possible while sucking. At the end of a week after calving, the udder was again in sound condition. The calf was kept until the first of June, and then the owner of its sire took it in full for service of bull three seasons. We then began to get the full flow of milk, and the pasture being good, it was a fine mess daily. At that time, I began to measure the milk, and have done so ever since. “June” gave four hundred and eighty-two quarts the month she was five years old, an average of sixteen quarts a day.
Until the last of July, the cow got all her food from the pasture, and one acre would have done as well as one and a quarter. For the next five or six weeks, the grass was hardly sufficient; it was, for this period, based upon the experience of August, 1876, that the corn had been provided. The ten rods of Mammoth Sweet, three hundred and fifty to four hundred hills, had been put in at five different plantings, a week apart, and the earliest was just forming ears the last of July when I began using it, at first once a day, then twice. For each feed, the whole plants of three or four hills were taken, and chopped in a straw-cutter, ears and all, into two-inch lengths. This was eaten with great relish, and during August the cow spent most of the daytime standing in the stream where shaded by trees and grazed at night. The pasturage improved again before the corn gave out, so quite a nice piece of winter fodder was saved from the piece. Then all through September there was every day more or less of green-corn husks, carrot and beet tops, other vegetable and fruit trimmings, clean refuse from house and garden, good food for the cow, so that again one acre of pasture would have sufficed. During October, the carrots and mangolds were harvested, and their tops gave the cow more than she could manage. I also began feeding turnips the last of October, a few with mangel tops at first, increasing until she ate more than half a bushel a day, tops and all. Before the ground froze, the turnips were piled in the barn, without trimming, and covered with hay; were kept safely until the last were fed, November twenty-eighth. The problem of winter feeding really came up the first of November. I had a large supply of roots on hand of my own raising, and the hay and grain to buy. So I went to the books, and after studying both practice and science, decided upon the following daily rations for the next six months: November first to May first, fifteen pounds of meadow rowen and clover hay, in about equal parts; one pound each of coarse wheat bran and corn-meal, mixed. During November, one-half bushel turnips and two pounds cotton-seed meal; December and January, one-half bushel carrots and one and one-half pound cotton-seed meal; February and March, one-half bushel (or more) of mangels and one pound cotton-seed meal; April, one-half bushel parsnips and one and one-half pounds cotton-seed meal; also, one hundred pounds additional hay, and my corn-stalks, for February and March.
This plan has been carried out with little variation. Of course the food has not been accurately weighed daily. The grain portions, kept in barrels, have been dipped out with tin cups, but have held out just about as expected; the quantity of hay and roots has been guessed at.