ONE YEAR’S EXPENSES AND RETURNS.

The cost of keeping the cow from November first, 1877, to June first, 1878, was as follows:
150	pounds	of Indian Meal, at $1.40		$ 2.10
380	”	Ship Stuff, at $1.35		5.13
110	”	Oil Meal, at $1.30		1.82
4140	”	Roots, at $8.00 per ton		16.56
3392	”	Hay, at $20		33.92
1	peck	Salt		0.25
				$59.78
The cost from June first to November first, 1878, was as follows:
1530	pounds	of Hay, at $20	$15.30
225	”	Oil meal, at $1.30	2.92
470	”	Bran, at $1.35	6.35
Salt			0.25
Service			2.00
				$26.82
Making a total cost of				$86.60

for the year, counting nothing for the garden truck consumed during the summer and autumn. This, with the exception of the corn stalks, would have been consigned to the compost heap, had she not eaten it, so that its only value to me was its value for compost. But allowing that for the purpose of feed it was equal in value to its equivalent in hay, and that my winter ration of hay had been continued through the year, her total cost of keeping would have been, in round numbers, one hundred and four dollars.

In the roots fed to her during the winter, were included the waste and parings of vegetables used in a family of ten persons, which was sometimes no inconsiderable item. These were always thrown into the feed basket, and just enough fresh roots sliced to make the required weight. After the roots stored in the cellar were exhausted no account was made of this item. I make this statement simply to show that every item of feed was entered at its full value, into the cost of the keeping.

Now for the other side. Although the cow was quite thin when I bought her, yet under this system of care and feeding, she was estimated to have gained two hundred pounds in weight by the time she calved, on the fifteenth of April, 1878, and of this weight she had not lost more than seventy-five pounds at the end of the year, November first. When I bought her she was represented as yielding three quarts of milk per day. Her yield of milk weighed on the first day exactly five and three-quarter pounds. At the end of three weeks, it had increased to eleven pounds per day, and continued at this figure with scarcely any interruption until the first of February. It then rapidly fell off, until by the twenty-fifth of that month, she yielded only seven pounds per day. I then commenced milking her once a day, and the milking on the fourth day after weighed only four and a half pounds. I continued milking her until the fifteenth of March, when I stopped, the weight of the last milking being only one and three-quarter pounds. On the tenth or April she calved. I let her calf suckle her until it was four weeks old, when it was sold for veal. On the seventh of May her yield of milk was twenty-two pounds. It averaged about that figure until she got a full feed of pea vines in June, when it ran up as high as twenty-seven pounds. In July it fell off some, and continued to run from twenty to twenty-three pounds until the middle of August. It then gradually diminished to the first of November, at which time she was yielding thirteen pounds of milk per day. I find, by referring to my diary, that her total yield of milk from the time I purchased her until she calved, was one thousand and sixty-seven pounds, equal to four hundred and eighty-four quarts, reckoning thirty-four ounces to the quart. Milk was then selling, in this vicinity, at six cents per quart, making a value of twenty-six dollars and four cents.

From the time she calved until the first of November, her total yield of milk was three thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven pounds, equal to one thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven quarts, at five cents, eighty-eight dollars and eighty-five cents; sale of calf, six dollars and fifty-cents; making a net profit of seventeen dollars and thirty-nine cents, to say nothing of the growth of the cow, or the value of her manure, which was an ample compensation for the care of keeping.

Had I estimated the value of her milk at the retail price, I should add one cent per quart for summer, and two cents per quart for winter. The next year this same cow, with the increase of the equivalent of one and a half pounds of meal per day, to allow for her increased growth, and a slight deviation in the matter of feed during the summer, whereby she obtained more green food, of which I shall speak hereafter, increased her profit almost forty per cent.