Opening the text

Milch Cows and Dairy Farming: Comprising the Breeds, Breeding, and Management, in Health and Disease, of Dairy and Other Stock, the Selection of Milch Cows, with a Full Explanation of Guenon's Method; The Culture of Forage Plants, and the Production of Milk, Butter, and Cheese: Embodying the Most Recent Improvements, and Adapted to Farming in the United States and British Provinces. With a Treatise upon the Dairy Husbandry of Holland; To Which Is Added Horsfall's System of Dairy ManagementFlint, Charles Louis

Science

Milch Cows and Dairy Farming: Comprising the Breeds, Breeding, and Management, in Health and Disease, of Dairy and Other Stock, the Selection of Milch Cows, with a Full Explanation of Guenon's Method; The Culture of Forage Plants, and the Production of Milk, Butter, and Cheese: Embodying the Most Recent Improvements, and Adapted to Farming in the United States and British Provinces. With a Treatise upon the Dairy Husbandry of Holland; To Which Is Added Horsfall's System of Dairy Management

Name: Milch Cows and Dairy Farming: Comprising the Breeds, Breeding, and Management, in Health and Disease, of Dairy and Other Stock, the Selection of Milch Cows, with a Full Explanation of Guenon's Method; The Culture of Forage Plants, and the Production of Milk, Butter, and Cheese: Embodying the Most Recent Improvements, and Adapted to Farming in the United States and British Provinces. With a Treatise upon the Dairy Husbandry of Holland; To Which Is Added Horsfall's System of Dairy Management
Author: Flint, Charles Louis

Flint, Charles Louis

Cows; Dairying

A certain German farmer was visited, one day, by some Swiss from over
the border, who desired to buy of him all the milk of his cows for the
purpose of making cheese. Not being able to agree upon the terms, he
finally proposed to let them take the entire charge of his cows, and
agreed to furnish food amply sufficient, the Swiss assuming the whole
care of feeding it out, and paying a fixed price by measure for all the
milk. “I found myself, at once,” says he, “under the necessity of
selling almost half my cows, because the Swiss required nearly double
the quantity of fodder which the cows had previously had, and I was well
satisfied that all the produce I could raise on my farm would be far
from sufficient to feed in that way the number of cows I had kept. I was
in despair at finding them using such a quantity of the best quality of
feed, though it was according to the strict letter of the contract,
especially as I knew that I had given my cows rather more than the
quantity of food recommended by men in whom I had perfect confidence.
Thus, while Thaër names twenty-three pounds of hay, or its equivalent,
as food sufficient for a good-sized cow, I gave mine full twenty-seven
pounds. But, if the change effected in the management of my cows was
great, the result was still more striking. The quantity of milk kept
increasing, and it reached the highest point when the cows attained the
condition of the fat kine of Pharaoh’s dream. The quantity of milk
became double, triple, and even quadruple, what it had been before; so
that, if I should compare the product with that previously obtained, a
hundred pounds of hay produced three times more milk than it had
produced with my old mode of feeding. Such results, of course, attracted
my attention to this branch of my farming. It became a matter of
pleasure; and my observations were followed up with great care, and
during several years I devoted a large part of my time to it. I even
went so far as to procure scales for weighing the food and the animals,
in order to establish exact data on the most positive basis.”

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.