Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 May 1877 — Feeding and Care of Cows. [ARTICLE]

Feeding and Care of Cows.

We will take this as the first opera on in the management of dairying; as it is very essential that milch cows should be furnished at all times with an abundant supply of sweet nutritious food and pure water;.also kept in good condition and perfect health. Cows are living machines—milk-manu-facturing machines; and if not provided with good fuel and water, the machineiy lags and 3tops. When milch cows are confined on scanty feed, requiring a considerable portion of their time to get a requisite supply of food, or are obliged to travel long distances for drink, they will secrete much less milk, and of a poorer quality, than when they can fill themselves quickly with sweet wholesome food, and then lie down in the shade and quietly ruminate their food and manufacture milk from it, as their milk is made from what they eat, and will contain properties of it; therefore, cows should have such food as will yield milk of the best qualities for butter making, and that which will produce the most of it. Grass is considered the most natural, cheapest and best, hut as to the kinds of grasses that are best we are not fully competent to recommend, but from our observation and experience, can say that butter of excellent quality is made from herdß grass, white clover and the different kinds of June grasses. No cow can produce pure and healthy milk without she has pure and healthy food and drink. Whatever may cause an unhealthy condition of a cow, it will be sure to deteriorate her milk, and nothing will be more sure to do this than scanty and poor food and drink, rough treatment and exposures. A neglected or thin feverish cow will not only yield a diminished profit, but she will give feverish milk if any; or if there is anything wrong about her, it will affect her milk; or if she eats anything that has a strong or disagreeable odor, it will sorely appear in her milk, cream and the butter produced from it, as her milk is oue source she has of casting off filth from her organism. These facts should avail times be well impressed up. on the minds of farmers, but more especially in the spring ot the year, when cows are liable to be thin and more or less feverish. Many farmers keep their cows confined in stanchions too great a portion of the time through the long winter, and, too, in small ill-ventilated stables, where they cannot always get fresh pure air, neither can they have proper exercise and water at all times when desired and needed by them. Some allow their cows to lie out of doors, exposed to the winter storms and piercing winds, with scarcely a shed for them to get under, which certainly cannot be good economy, for, by such exposures, they will require much more food and they will not be in as good condition in the spring. It will require a great pprtion of the summer, and goocT feed, for them to make op this lost condition, and, too, in the best butter-making season; neither will they yield as much milk, nor as rich milk, as they would if they had had good care through the winter and were in good condition. In winter, and especially in the spring, cpws need special attention and care. They should have clean, warm, spacious stables, well ventilated, and a variety of wholesome food in abundance, especially well-cured, early-cut, floe hay, also good water; and in summer

they should be provided with goodpastnrta abundance, with plentiful supplies of running water, and shade trees or sheds to protect theta from the intense rays of the sun. There should be sowed corn, or other green herbage, on hand for all feeding. especially in a dry autumn, and laier as frosty weather approaches.—/. P. Corbin, in Western Rural. —The new Jury law of Florida provides that when, in any case, civil or criminal, a knowledge of reading, writing and arithmetic is necessary to enable a juror to undemand the evidence to be offered, he may be challenged if he does not possess such qualifications.