Cattle and Their Diseases: Embracing Their History and Breeds, Crossing and Breeding, and Feeding and Management; with the Diseases to Which They Are Subject, and the Remedies Best Adapted to Their CureJennings, Robert
Science
Cattle and Their Diseases: Embracing Their History and Breeds, Crossing and Breeding, and Feeding and Management; with the Diseases to Which They Are Subject, and the Remedies Best Adapted to Their Cure
Jennings, Robert
Cattle -- Diseases
In spring, the best feeding for dairy cows will be much the same as that
for winter; the roots in store over winter, such as carrots, mangold
wurtzel, turnips, and parsnips, furnishing very valuable aid in
increasing the quantity and improving the quality of milk. Toward the
close of this season, and before the grass of pastures is sufficiently
grown to make it judicious to turn out the cows, the best dairymen
provide a supply of green fodder in the shape of winter rye, which, if
cut while it is tender and succulent, and before it is half grown, will
be greatly relished. Unless cut young, however, its stalk soon becomes
hard and unpalatable.
All practical dairymen agree in saying that a warm and well-ventilated
barn is indispensable to the promotion of the highest yield of milk in
winter; and most agree that cows in milk should not be turned out, even
to drink, in cold weather; all exposure to cold tending to lessen the
yield of milk.
In the London dairies, in which, of course, the cows are fed so as to
produce the largest flow of milk, the treatment is as follows: The cows
are kept at night in stalls. About three A. M. each has a half-bushel of
grains. When milking is finished, each receives a bushel of turnips (or
mangolds), and shortly afterward, one tenth of a truss of hay of the
best quality. This feeding occurs before eight A. M., when the animals
are turned into the yard. Four hours after, they are again tied up in
their stalls, and have another feed of grains. When the afternoon
milking is over (about three P. M.), they are fed with a bushel of
turnips, and after the lapse of an hour, hay is given them as before.
This mode of feeding usually continues throughout the cool season, or
from November to March. During the remaining months they are fed with
grains, tares, and cabbages, and a proportion of rowen, or second-cut
hay. They are supplied regularly until they are turned out to grass,
when they pass the whole of the night in the field. The yield is about
six hundred and fifty gallons a year for each cow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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