Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 January 1879 — Don’t Starve or Expose Your Stock. [ARTICLE]

Don’t Starve or Expose Your Stock.

So much is said and written about how stock should be cared for during the winter, that We scarcely care to five advice uponghe subject; but Will, owever, give in a few words what we do nut approve or or’ bblieve In. f We don't believe that it fe Necessary, in order to make a good horse of a yearling colt, that he should be turned out to seek his own living during the winter either in a stock field or a patch o hazel brush, with n 6 shelter and perhaps without water. This mode, some say, toughens him and gives him constitution. We admit if the colt lives through it he must have been tolerably tough and had a very fair constitution, which hardly needed improvement, and especially of such a radical nature. We do not believe that it is necessary the calf should rirf yuAuallv staxyed in order to make of it a good cow. If it is for the dairy or breeding purposes, it should be kept in good growing oonr ditldn, never all'owea to get poor, but fed upon such food as will make bone and muscle, blit not mfleh, fat; but if it is intended fur’ beef, then 'it should be pushed from the start, and fed upon tood that wlll malte fat W well as bone andnnuscle. , We therefore think that to raise good stock of any kind they should be well fed and cared for, and to keep them good they should not only be well fed, but in bad weather, either wet, cold or excessively Warm, they should be well Because our domestic animals can endure almost any kind of hard usage it is no evidence that such treatment is the best, most profitable or humane manner to care for them; nor that all kinds of food is plenty and cheap, cattle and colts should not be compelled to seek their own living among the cornstalks, or on bare pasture lot, until they are reduced in flesh; but, on the contrary, they should go into winter quarters in good condition. They can then be kept thriving and come out in the spring ready to at once proceed improving, and not as in the case when they have been standing during the fall and winter, require half the summer to regain what they had lost during the winter. But because feed is cheap and plenty, we should feed with care and judgment, and avoid waste, for with hay at from three to five dollars per ton, corn from fifteen to twenty cents per bushel, and oats at from, ten to fifteen cents, it is just as necessary for the fanner to economize, also the feeder who purchases, as it was when hay, corn and pats were worth in market three times as much as they now are, for the reason that everything, or nearly so, sells now in-same proportion. And it is just as hard to obtain the money to' buy 1 oats at from ten to fifteen cents now- as It was a leit years ago, when they were worth from thirty to thirty-five cents; and the seller can purchase as much now with the proceeds of his crops as he ootlld when they brought three times as much.—-Western Stock Journal and Fanner.