[1] It is better, as a rule, not to allow the calf to suck at all. Aptness in learning to drink is influenced by heredity. Calves from ancestors that have not been allowed to suck, learn to drink more readily than those which have been allowed to run with the dam.
A FEW WORDS AS TO GENERAL MANAGEMENT.
I think it cruel to keep cows tied up all summer. They do not require much exercise, but fresh air they must have, and it is a great comfort to them to lick themselves, although they ought to be well curried every day. It is better to milk after feeding, as they stand more quietly. Don’t allow your milk-maid to wash the cow’s teats in the milk pail, a filthy habit much in vogue. Insist on her taking a wet cloth and wiping the cow’s bag thoroughly before she commences to milk. A cow ought to be milked in ten minutes, although the first time I undertook to milk alone, I tugged away for an hour. I knew how much milk I ought to have, and I was bound to get it. An old cow will eat more than a young one, but will give richer milk. If you can get a cow with her second calf, you can keep her profitably for five years, when she should be sold to the butcher. There is nothing that will keep your cow-shed so neat, and add so much to the value of your manure pile, as a few shovelfuls of dry earth or muck thrown under the cow. It will absorb the liquid manure better than anything else. Don’t allow your milk pans to be appropriated for all sorts of household uses; you cannot make sweet, firm butter if the milk is put into rusty old tin. Skim the milk twice a day into the stone churn; add a little salt, and stir it well every time you put in fresh cream. Use spring water, but don’t allow ice to come in contact with the butter; it destroys both color and flavor. If your cream is too warm, the butter will come more quickly, but it will be white and soft. When the cream is so cold that it takes me half an hour to churn, I always have the best butter. Don’t put your hands to it, work out the buttermilk with a wooden paddle, and work in the salt with the same thing. There is an old saying that one quart of milk a day gives one pound of butter a week, and I think it’s a pretty fair rule, but don’t expect to buy a cow that will give you thirty quarts of milk a day. There are such cows I know, but they are not for sale. Be quite satisfied if your cow gives half that quantity. Place the cow’s food where she cannot step on it, but don’t put it high up; It is natural for them to eat with their heads down. I think it is better that the family cow should have a calf every year, provided you can have them come early in the spring or late in the autumn. As to the time that a cow should be dry, that depends much upon the way the cow was brought up. If she was allowed to go dry early in the season with her first calf, she will always do it. A cow being a very conservative animal, she should be milked as long as her milk is good. When she is dry, stop feeding the provender, bran, and oil-cake, and give her plenty of good hay, with some roots, until after she calves. The provender and oil-cake being strong food, are apt to produce inflammation and other troubles at calving time. You can feed turnips when she is dry, at the rate of two pails a day, cut up fine, of course, but don’t feed turnips when she is milking. I have tried every way to destroy the flavor of turnips in milk, but without success. I have boiled it, put soda in it, fed the cow after milking, but it was all the same—turnip flavor unmistakable—and as we don’t like our butter so flavored, I only feed turnips when the cow is dry.
The Rev. E. P. Roe in his delightful book called “Play and Profit in My Garden,” says: “If a family in ordinary good circumstances, kept a separate account of the fruit and vegetables bought and used during the year, they would, doubtless, be surprised at the sum total. But if they could see the amount they could and would consume if they didn’t have to buy, surprise would be a very mild way of putting it.” The same rule applies to the keeping of a cow. We buy one quart a day and manage to get along with it. Our cow gives us ten to twenty quarts a day and we make way with the greater part of it. I think with a cow and a garden, one may manage to live, but life without either, according to my ways of thinking, would be shorn of many of its pleasures.
THE COW IN THE MIDDLE STATES.
BY W. L. BATTLES, GIRARD, PA.
Instead of writing on how a cow might be kept, I propose simply to tell just how we manage our cow, what we feed her, how we procure that food; in fact everything relating to her care, so that any one can go and do likewise.
“Spot,” we call her, for she has a beautiful white spot in her forehead, is not a Jersey, for we can not afford to buy one at the prices at which they are held with us; nor is she a thorough-bred of any kind; yet she is a good cow, of medium size, fills a twelve-quart pail each night and morning, when her milk is in good flow, that raises a thick coat of rich cream, which, after been churned, furnishes all the butter needed for a family of six, and some to spare. Our place is small, only two acres, and a portion of this is covered by the dwelling, barn, poultry-house, etc. The fruit garden occupies about one-fourth of an acre, and from this portion nothing is grown to furnish food for “Spot.” Adjoining the barn there is half an acre of the land in good grass, or mostly clover, and every spring a quart of clover seed is sown, so as fast as the old plants die out, young ones take their places. A bushel of land plaster is sown on this when the grass begins to start in the spring. This plot produces a very heavy growth of grass and clover, enabling us to cut it three times each season; about the first of June, August, and of October. A coat of fine manure is always spread over the ground immediately after each mowing. The grass is mostly cured, and makes fine hay for winter feeding. Occasionally a small portion of the crop is used green for soiling. Besides the land occupied by buildings, fruit garden, and clover plot, there remains about one acre, which we call the garden. Here are grown all the vegetables for the family’s use, besides some to sell. About one-fourth of it is planted to Early Rose potatoes, and as soon as these are sufficiently ripe for use or market, they are dug, and sweet corn, in drills, for fodder, is sown upon the land. Another fourth of an acre is planted to sugar beets; the ground being very rich, the yield is always large; this last season (1879), though very dry, I harvested one hundred and seventy-eight bushels. Our cow is very fond of the beets, and I think there is nothing better to keep up a flow of milk, and they give it no bad flavor, as do turnips. An additional fourth of an acre is planted to sweet, or evergreen, corn; as fast as the corn is picked for use or market, the green stalks are cut up, run through the cutting-box, and every particle of them consumed. As soon as the corn is all harvested, the ground it occupied is thoroughly fitted and manured, and then sown to winter rye, to be used for soiling the next spring, after which the ground is again prepared for corn. The remaining fourth acre is devoted to early peas, beans, cabbages and other garden vegetables. As soon as one crop is off, the ground is prepared, and something else is almost always planted or sown; consequently, on the most of this acre, two crops are produced each season, except where sugar-beets are grown, or late cabbages, which require the whole season to mature. With the clover on the half acre, and the forage crop and roots on the acre, we have not only had sufficient food for the cow the entire season, but have also kept our family horse, with the exception of one load of oat-straw purchased for three dollars, to mix in with the fodder corn; this is hard to cure sufficiently to keep bright and sweet through the winter, but by mixing a layer of corn-fodder, and a layer of straw, it all comes out nice and bright. Besides keeping both horse and cow, we have marketed from this little farm, in berries, vegetables, butter, eggs, poultry, and one fat hog, weighing, dressed, over three hundred pounds, four hundred and sixty-eight dollars’ worth of the above produce, keeping enough for our own use, and salting down one barrel of pork.