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
The spring time of the first year must be tided over with hay until the
clover is large enough for soiling. Green clover is then fed to the cow
until the oats are sufficiently advanced. The oats are then used as long
as they are fit for the purpose, cutting them a second time as far as
practicable, and the residue, if any, is cured for hay before it gets too
ripe for that purpose. The same course is pursued with the rye in the
following years. The clover should be cut for hay rather early, in order
to get it in the best possible condition, and to insure a good second,
and perhaps a third crop. All the aftermath not used in soiling, should
be converted into hay. When the oats are exhausted, clover is fed until
the corn fodder is large enough for use. This is fed until the ears make
their appearance, and what is then left is cut and cured for dry fodder
during winter. After the green corn fodder is all consumed, there will be
a growth of new clover in the oats stubble the first year, and in the rye
stubble in after years, with which the cow is soiled until the artichokes
are ready to feed, and if any of the new clover is left by that time, it
is made into hay. The artichokes are fed raw; in winter, with hay and
other dry fodder, and as long as they last in spring.
In the second year soiling begins with rye, and continues afterwards
through the season the same as the first year, and a like course is
followed in succeeding years.
FEEDING ARTICHOKES.
The artichokes will grow until frost kills the stalks, and a patch of
one-quarter of an acre, when the soil is in good condition, will yield a
yearly average of between two hundred and fifty and three hundred bushels
of them. They can be fed before they are quite ripe, in which case the
cow will eat up the whole plant—root, stalk, and branch. She must not
have access to a heap of the tubers, lest she surfeit and seriously
injure herself. As long as the whole plant is fed, she should not be
allowed more at a time than she will eat up clean, for if she gets more
she will eat the tubers, and refuse the stalks. In fact she will prefer
these tubers at all times to any other food. She should therefore receive
a certain allowance, say a peck or a little more, three times a day, so
that she will eat up the stalks, and also a small portion of other forage
with them. In winter and spring she will consume a bushel or more of the
raw tubers a day, together with eight or ten pounds of hay or other dry
food. Her ration of artichokes should never be so large that she will
reject other food.
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