| One five-gallon stone churn | $1.25 |
| One and a half dozen milk pans, at $2 | 3.00 |
| One milk pail and strainer | .60 |
| One butter bowl (wooden) | .50 |
| One paddle and print | .20 |
| Two wooden pails for feed | .40 |
| One card | .25 |
| $6.20 | |
| Cost of a good cow | 40.00 |
| Interest at 6 per cent | $3.69 |
Any ordinary family will take from a milkman at least one quart a day. We in Ottawa pay eight cents per quart, making per year (365 × 8,) $29.20.
It is a very poor cow that will not average five pounds of butter a week for forty weeks, and that at twenty-five cents per pound, that is 40 (weeks) × 5 (pounds), × 25 (cents), equals 50 (dollars).
So the account stands thus:
| Butter | $50.00 | ||
| Milk | 29.20 | ||
| $79.20 | |||
| Cost of food for one year | $47.00 | } | |
| Interest on cow and trousseau | 3.69 | } | 50.69 |
| Profit | $28.51 |
LAND AND CROPS.
I have found that two acres of land is the least possible area that will provide cow-food for the entire year, and that should be divided thus: One acre for hay, the other for fodder and mangels. If you have no land already seeded down, plow up your acre, sow clover and timothy, six pounds, of each. In May, when the grass has fairly started, top-dress it with two bushels of land plaster; if you can apply it just before a rain it is the best time. The first year you will have all clover hay, and it must be cut before the second blossom comes; if not cut early enough, the stalks become tough and woody, and are wasted by the cow. The second year, if top-dressed in the fall with the manure collected during the summer, you will have a fine crop of timothy, and if the land was good for anything you can cut hay from it for three years by giving it a little manure every fall. As early as the ground will admit, sow some peas and oats; one bushel of each will plant one-third of an acre. Peas do well on old sod, and are the best crop to plant on new ground. In about six weeks you can commence cutting it for fodder, and it should give the cow two good meals a day until corn comes in. L. B. Arnold, in “American Dairying,” says of corn: “When too thickly planted its stems and leaves are soft and pale, its juices thin and poor. If sown thin or in drills, so that the air and light and heat of the sun can reach it, and not fed until nearly its full size, it is a valuable soiling plant.” Now Mr. Waring, in “Farming for Profit,” says: “It is a common mistake when the corn is planted in drills to put in so little seed that the stalks grow large and strong, when they are neglected by the cattle, the leaves only being consumed. There should be forty grains at least to the foot of row, which will take from four to six bushels to the acre, but the result will fully justify the outlay, as the corn standing so close in the row will grow fine and thick.” My experience tells me that Mr. Waring is right; any way, my cow will not eat the coarse stalks which will grow when the corn is planted too thin.
The one-third acre reserved for mangels, must be the perfection of richness, well drained, and manured. If the soil is deep, you can plant them on the flat, but if the soil is shallow, plant them on ridges, the ridges thirty inches apart (I always plant them in that way); then thin out the plants to fifteen inches apart. Ten to twelve hundred bushels may be grown on an acre, but the ground must be properly prepared. In storing them, they require to be very carefully handled, as the least bruise hastens decay, and we want to keep them fresh and good until April, when our cow ought to give us a calf.
WEANING THE CALF.
I thought I had tried almost everything relating to the care of cows, but when I undertook to wean a five-weeks’-old calf, I found my education in that respect sadly neglected. I asked a farmer’s wife how I was to manage. “Oh,” she said, “just dip your fingers in the milk, and let the calf suck them a few times, and it will soon learn to put its nose in the pail and drink.” It sounded simple enough, so I took my pail and started for the barn, where that wretched animal slopped me all over with milk, bunted me round and round the pen, until I was black and blue, sucked the skin off my finger, and wouldn’t drink. After trying at intervals for two days, the calf was getting thin, and so was I. In despair, I left the pail of milk, giving that calf a few words of wholesome advice. When I went back two hours after, the calf was standing over the empty pail, with an expression on its face, that I translated into an inquiry, as to why I hadn’t left that pail there before. I have weaned several calves since then, but have never had any trouble. Leave them with the cow three or four days, then take a little milk and hold the calf’s nose in the pail; it must open its mouth or smother, and when once it tastes the milk, will soon learn to drink.[1] When it is a week old, commence feeding with oil-cake, skim-milk and molasses. Into an old two-pound peach can, I put one tablespoonful of oil-cake and one of molasses, fill up the can with boiling water, and set it on the stove until thoroughly cooked. That quantity will be its allowance for one day, mixed with skim-milk. The next week, give it that quantity at each meal, and the next week, twice that. The calf will then be four weeks old, and the butcher ought to give you a price for it that will pay for all trouble and the family milk bill while the cow was dry. It does not pay to raise calves where you only keep one cow. (Mr. Cochrane, the owner of the celebrated cow “Duchess of Airdrie,” told me the other morning that last year he sold a calf of her’s to an English gentleman for four thousand guineas (twenty thousand dollars). I think it would pay to have a wet nurse if one had a calf like that). A tablespoonful of lime-water put in the milk now and then will prevent the calf from “scouring,” a complaint very common among calves brought up by hand. I believe that winter rye makes a valuable soiling plant, but I have never tried it.