TETHERING.
A professional friend of mine is the owner of three horses and two imported cows, all of which are kept in very high condition. He informs me that for several years, with the exception of one year, two and one half acres of land have furnished all the hay consumed by the five animals, together with pasturage for one cow; the other cow being dry during the summer, is pastured in the country. His land is naturally good grass land, being moist, well drained, and perfectly smooth. The apparatus for tethering his cow, when at pasture, consists of a pole or joist, the short end of which is weighted, swiveled on an iron upright, standing, when in position, about four feet above the ground, giving the apparatus the appearance of a model of an old-fashioned well sweep. The halter being attached to the upper end, is always above her back while feeding. This arrangement allows the cow the range of a circuit thirty feet in diameter. The upright is removed to the arc of the circle at morning and noon. In this manner she traverses the length of the lot, four hundred feet, in fourteen days, when she is brought back to the starting point, to repeat the journey again. In this manner, twelve thousand feet of land is made to furnish pasturage for one cow during the entire summer, and besides this, she has no feed whatever. The cow is always in good condition, and the ground never appears very closely cropped, and I have no doubt that were she restricted to one quarter of an acre, or ten thousand eight hundred and ninety feet, she would still be better fed than most cows that are at pasture. The droppings of the cow are daily removed from this range, so that she always has a clean feeding ground. All the manure made by the five animals is annually returned to this lot, and, in addition, the owner informs me, once in three years he gives it a dressing of a ton of ground bone.