Keeping one cow: Being the experience of a number of practical writers, in a clear and condensed form, upon the management of a single milch cowVarious
Science
Keeping one cow: Being the experience of a number of practical writers, in a clear and condensed form, upon the management of a single milch cow
Various
Cows; Dairying
four hundred and eighty-two quarts the month she was five years old, an
average of sixteen quarts a day.
Until the last of July, the cow got all her food from the pasture, and
one acre would have done as well as one and a quarter. For the next
five or six weeks, the grass was hardly sufficient; it was, for this
period, based upon the experience of August, 1876, that the corn had
been provided. The ten rods of Mammoth Sweet, three hundred and fifty to
four hundred hills, had been put in at five different plantings, a week
apart, and the earliest was just forming ears the last of July when I
began using it, at first once a day, then twice. For each feed, the whole
plants of three or four hills were taken, and chopped in a straw-cutter,
ears and all, into two-inch lengths. This was eaten with great relish,
and during August the cow spent most of the daytime standing in the
stream where shaded by trees and grazed at night. The pasturage improved
again before the corn gave out, so quite a nice piece of winter fodder
was saved from the piece. Then all through September there was every day
more or less of green-corn husks, carrot and beet tops, other vegetable
and fruit trimmings, clean refuse from house and garden, good food for
the cow, so that again one acre of pasture would have sufficed. During
October, the carrots and mangolds were harvested, and their tops gave the
cow more than she could manage. I also began feeding turnips the last
of October, a few with mangel tops at first, increasing until she ate
more than half a bushel a day, tops and all. Before the ground froze,
the turnips were piled in the barn, without trimming, and covered with
hay; were kept safely until the last were fed, November twenty-eighth.
The problem of winter feeding really came up the first of November. I
had a large supply of roots on hand of my own raising, and the hay and
grain to buy. So I went to the books, and after studying both practice
and science, decided upon the following daily rations for the next six
months: November first to May first, fifteen pounds of meadow rowen and
clover hay, in about equal parts; one pound each of coarse wheat bran and
corn-meal, mixed. During November, one-half bushel turnips and two pounds
cotton-seed meal; December and January, one-half bushel carrots and one
and one-half pound cotton-seed meal; February and March, one-half bushel
(or more) of mangels and one pound cotton-seed meal; April, one-half
bushel parsnips and one and one-half pounds cotton-seed meal; also, one
hundred pounds additional hay, and my corn-stalks, for February and March.
This plan has been carried out with little variation. Of course the
food has not been accurately weighed daily. The grain portions, kept in
barrels, have been dipped out with tin cups, but have held out just about
as expected; the quantity of hay and roots has been guessed at.
THE METHOD OF FEEDING
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