If there is ready sale for milk at paying prices, we would dispose of the calf in some way, when it is a few days old, but if milk is not salable at good prices, it is better to let the calf have the milk until from four to six weeks old, and then if the butcher will not give us a fair price for it, we get some one to dress it for us, and sell it among our neighbors, who are generally glad to buy it. In that way we get from eight to twelve dollars for our calf. We think it as well for the cow to keep the calf for that length of time. It seems to satisfy a necessity of her nature to have her baby suck and draw its nourishment from her. We know of no better picture of contentment than to see an old cow suckling her calf after being away from it all day.
We advise regular hours of milking night and morning, and kind, gentle treatment, carding in winter, cleanliness and thorough ventilation of stable at all times. In summertime, if confined in a yard, a thin sheet to keep off the flies will be found very comfortable for the cow, and profitable to the owner. I presume some will ridicule the idea of blanketing the cow, but why not as well as the horse? Again, if confined in a yard, she should have plenty of clean pure water, and plenty of shade. Keeping a cow, with us, is not altogether a matter of fancy or pleasure, but of convenience, economy, comfort, profit, and health, in having pure sweet milk and fresh butter.
ALFALFA OR LUCERN.
BY SAM’L C. HAMMER, DOWNEY CITY, CAL.
I have lived in Tennessee, in Texas, and now reside in California. I have been using Alfalfa for some eight or ten years, and from my own personal care of and attention to this article, I maintain one can obtain more milk the year round from it, without change to other food, than from any one thing grown. Besides, Alfalfa can be grown at less expense, and is attended with less labor, whether fed green or cured, than any other feed.
Alfalfa can be grown in Canada, it is said. If so, then any one has the chance to try this wonderful friend to the farmer. Once sown on deeply cultivated land, free of weeds, it is good for ten years, or even more, with us. Twenty pounds is abundant seed for an acre—some think too much; but it should be sown thickly. Let it stand thick, and it is finer and more tender. Where sown sparsely it becomes woody and coarse. It can be cut here as early as March, where mowing and not grazing is adhered to, and it should never be grazed or “staked” (fed off by tethered cattle). From seven to nine cuttings can be obtained from it, and from fifteen to twenty tons of cured hay a year made to the acre; that is, if on good land and if the crop fully occupies the ground, and is cut just as a few scattering blooms are observed. This hay must be cured as rapidly as possible, raked in windrows and bunched the second day, rather letting it cure in bunches than in any other manner, to prevent leaves falling off; then housing or “shedding” it soon as possible, sprinkling salt through it as stacked, to prevent mould.
Alfalfa needs no top-dressing with fertilizers and manure, but simply a severe cross-harrowing with a very sharp-toothed harrow, bearing the weight of a man. The more the Alfalfa is torn and split up the better it will grow. This harrowing should be done in spring before it commences its first growth. After growing a few years, the stools project, in many places, above the surface of the ground. If an implement could be devised for the purpose of cutting off all these old stalks just below the surface, then seed lightly, giving a good harrowing, the plants would be renewed, and would thicken up rapidly, for wherever a stalk or root is cut off, dozens of new shoots spring up in its place.
However, I advocate a change of diet for brutes as well as mankind, and therefore take for the family cow a half acre of most excellent ground. I will suppose that one half of it—that is a quarter acre—is well set in Alfalfa. The rest I would have plowed twice, very deep, smoothed and laid off in drills for carrots, which, at the proper season (with us in February or March), I would enrich in the furrows with any well-rotted manure. For Alfalfa almost any good soil suits, for I find it adapts itself to various soils and endures a great deal of rough treatment, but in order to get the best results it should be well treated. I prefer a moderately sandy soil, which is naturally moist. On dry, mellow ground, it will send down a tap-root ten feet. I have drawn roots out of very sandy soil when digging post holes that would measure six feet. They seek moisture during dry weather, and although I have had Alfalfa die down, the ground being parched and cracked, yet when the fall or winter rains begin, it springs up in a few days.