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

FEEDING ARTICHOKES.

The artichokes will grow until frost kills the stalks, and a patch of one-quarter of an acre, when the soil is in good condition, will yield a yearly average of between two hundred and fifty and three hundred bushels of them. They can be fed before they are quite ripe, in which case the cow will eat up the whole plant—root, stalk, and branch. She must not have access to a heap of the tubers, lest she surfeit and seriously injure herself. As long as the whole plant is fed, she should not be allowed more at a time than she will eat up clean, for if she gets more she will eat the tubers, and refuse the stalks. In fact she will prefer these tubers at all times to any other food. She should therefore receive a certain allowance, say a peck or a little more, three times a day, so that she will eat up the stalks, and also a small portion of other forage with them. In winter and spring she will consume a bushel or more of the raw tubers a day, together with eight or ten pounds of hay or other dry food. Her ration of artichokes should never be so large that she will reject other food.

Artichokes can be fed for about eight months of the year, say from the first of October to the first of June, during which time the cow will consume two hundred and forty bushels, or more, of them. These, with the hay and other dry fodder, will keep her in excellent condition, and produce an abundance of good milk without additional food. One ton of hay or other dry fodder, in connection with the artichokes, will last during the said eight months, affording the cow eight or nine pounds a day. Three quarters of a ton may suffice, but she should not have less than this. If the crop of hay and other dry fodder exceeds a ton, it may all be fed during the first year, or a part of it may be kept over for the ensuing year. In stowing away the hay, ten or twelve quarts of salt should be scattered through a ton of it, to impart a relish. In addition to this, the cow should receive two or three ounces of salt daily, and plenty of pure fresh water.