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

ONE YEAR’S RESULTS.

To show what I have accomplished by it, I will give an account of the products of my cow “Polly,” for the year ending April first, 1880, together with a statement of the actual expenses of her keeping. Besides what was used in a family of four, I have sold one hundred and sixty-nine pounds of butter, at an average of twenty cents per pound, which amounts to thirty-three dollars and eighty cents; eight hundred and twenty-eight quarts of milk, at six cents per quart, forty-nine dollars and sixty-eight cents; eighteen quarts of butter-milk, at three cents per quart, fifty-four cents; eleven quarts of sour milk, at two cents, twenty-two cents; one calf, four days old, one dollar and seventy-five cents; total, eighty-five dollars and ninety-nine cents. To this I may add one hundred and twenty pounds of butter consumed at home, twenty-four dollars, and about two hundred and thirty quarts of milk, worth thirteen dollars and eighty cents; making in all, one hundred and twenty-three dollars and seventy-nine cents. The cost of feed was as follows: One thousand pounds bran, nine dollars and sixty cents; one thousand pounds corn meal, eleven dollars and fifty cents; seven hundred and fifty pounds of oatmeal, nine dollars and eighty five cents; three thousand pounds clover hay, thirteen dollars and fifty cents; two hundred pounds rye straw, one dollar and fifty cents; muck, two dollars; total, forty-seven dollars and ninety-five cents; leaving a balance of seventy-five dollars and eighty-four cents. As I keep a horse, I have the necessary tools for cultivating the land myself, I have not added the cost of cultivation as an item in the expense column, and perhaps it may be said that I should also have added interest on land and buildings. As an offset to these, I would call attention to the valuable pile of manure, and furthermore I have made no account of a large amount of skim-milk, on which I raised a pig. This pig was fed nothing but sour milk, and a very few small potatoes, until about four weeks prior to butchering, when he was “finished off” on corn meal. He weighed, after being dressed, December twenty-eighth, two hundred and seventy-eight pounds. The profits from this cow would undoubtedly have been larger had I sold all the milk, instead of making butter out of a part of it, but I did not make mere profit my sole object in the matter. I wished to supply my family with those necessary luxuries which, I believe, are rendered even sweeter by the consciousness of their being the products of our own labor. The pleasure which I have taken in caring for my pet cow, and in providing for her wants, and the pride I feel in exhibiting both my cow and the delicious rich milk and yellow butter, with which she so bountifully supplies us, amply repays me for my part of the labor. I have made no account of using concentrated food, such as oil-cake and cotton-seed meal, for the reason that I have had very little experience in the use of them. Whenever an animal has become thin and poor, these articles of food may be used to advantage to increase the flesh and bring the animal into good condition. But I never let my cow get poor, and I find that good hay, with corn, oats, and bran, answers every purpose, and is fully adequate to all her requirements. My system of rotation is as follows: The one-eighth acre of clover sod of the preceding year is well manured either during the winter or in the spring, and well fitted up and sown to beets or mangels. This crop occupies the land during the whole season. The same plot is again plowed the next spring for sowed corn. After this crop is off it is again manured and sown to rye, and the following spring is again seeded to clover. It is kept in clover one year, yielding two crops during the season, after which it is treated as before. Each of the four plots undergoes the same treatment; thus a complete rotation is established.