Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 January 1879 — Winter Feeding of Cows. [ARTICLE]

Winter Feeding of Cows.

During summer, when the herbage is fresh and abundant, cows make tneir own milk. All that Is needed then is to see that their grass is abundant and their water is sure. In the winter season it is the owner’s skill, more than anything else, that makes the milk. To keep a cow in full flow through the winter is a matter of difficulty to the most skillful dairyman. But it oan be done if the means are at hand and the methods are followed. The first requisite is a warm stable, iq which there is abundant ventilation, and where perfect cleanliness can be observed, for comfort is as neoessary to full milking, as feed or water. The skin of the cow should also be kept clean, and well carded or brushed, for the healthful action of tho skin is neoessary for health and healthful secretions. Then the teed should bo nutritions, easily digestible, and abundant. Hay is the principal winter fodder for cows, and early-cut clover mixed with “meadowgrass,” chiefly what is known as June grass, or Kentucky bine grass, with some red-top, is the best for product of milk. Timothy and orchard grasses, if cut young and from fields thickly sown and well manured, will make goed hay for milch cows. Well-cured corn-fodder is but little inferior to the best hay; and the writer has found that sweet-corn fodder, sown in drills three feet apart, and with stalks six inches apart, grown to maturity, and carefully cured, will make more milk than an equal Weight of fairclover and timothy hay. The concentrated food supplied is of more importance than the coarse fodder, and it is here that mistakes are often made. Corn-meal alone is too rich in carbonaceous matters to produce milk; food that is richer in albumen than tbis is necessary. Corn, oats and rye bran, in equal weights, ground together, furnish a perfect food that is rich in phosphates, albumen and fat-forming substances, and thus produce a good flow of milk rich in cream. Buckwheat bran stimulates the secretion of milk greatly, but this food, being deficient m fat and starch, produces a poor quality of thin milk. Wheat middlings and bran, alone, have a tendency to reduce the yield of milk, at least that is the result of a continuous trial of this food for a whole month. Brewers’ grains are a nutritious food that helps greatly to increase the flow of milk, and if cornmeal is added the quality of the milk is also improved. The oil-cakes are rich in both albumen and oil, but few dairymen care to use these, because of the peculiar flavor which they impart to the milk. Potatoes, when chopped and mixed with meal, add to the yield of milk, and the quality produced by them is good, as might be expected from the large proportion of starch they contain. Turnips should be avoided as food for milking cows, as the cautious use of them required interferes greatly with the routine of the feeding, and makes much trouble. Pumpkins are a rich food and impart a good color to the cream; but the seed should be removed before they are fed to the cows, because of their diuretic effects. Apples are justjy condemned by dairymen, excepting in very small quantities of the sweet varieties, and even then it is a question if it would not he better to cart them to the manure heap or to the cider mill rather than give them to cows. The best-chosen foods should be fed in moderate quantities, and at four separate feeds. If a large quantity of food is crowded into the stomach, the digestive organs are too severely taxe<L and the ease and comfort of the cow is interfered with. The most perfect digestion goes on in a moderately well-filled stomach, and at though the cow’s paunch is capacious, vet one bushel of loose, dry fodder, or half a bushel of moist feed or roots, at once is sufficient. It is well to feed four times a day. The practice of. a well-conducted milk dairy is to feed at six o’clock in the morning one bushel of out fodder, wet and mixed with three quarts of feed of corn, oats and bran. At eight o’clock the cows are turned out to water and have a picking at the straw racks or some loose corn fodder. At eleven o’clock they are brought into the stable for an hour, and are each served with half a bushel of chopped potatoes, beets, or mangels, with two quarts of feed mixed with them. At twelve o’clock they are turned out to water again—there being running water in the yard—and pick at the straw or fodder racks until 4:30 o’clock, when they are brought in to be milked, and after that are fed with a similar mess to that of the morning. The last thing in the evening is to give them a few pounds of loose nay and to bed them comfortably with straw and shut them np in a stable through which no cold draft can penetrate, but which is, nevertheless, broad, high, spacious and well-aired. It is difficult to say how this method can be mended, and if regularity is observed in feeding, and a good kind of cows are kept, the maximum yield of milk, both in quantity and quality, may be expected.— N. Jr. Times.