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
Flint, Charles Louis
Cows; Dairying
Bean-straw uncooked being found to be hard and unpalatable, it was
steamed to make it soft and pulpy, when it possessed an agreeable odor,
and imparted its flavor to the whole mess. It was cut for this purpose
just before ripening, but after the bean was fully grown, and in this
state was found to possess nearly double the amount of albuminous
matter, so valuable to milch cows, of good meadow or upland hay. Bean or
shorts is also vastly improved by steaming or soaking with hot water,
when its nutriment is more readily assimilated. It contains about
fourteen per cent. of albumen, and is rich in phosphoric acid. Rape-cake
was found to be exceedingly valuable. Linseed and cotton-seed cake may
probably be substituted for it in this country. Mr. Horsfall is
accustomed to turn his cows in May into a rich pasture, housing them at
night, and giving them a mess of the steamed mixture and some hay
morning and night; and from June to October they have cut grass in the
stall, besides what they get in the pasture, and two feeds of the
steamed mixture a day. After the beginning of October the cows are kept
housed. With such management, his cows generally yield from twelve to
sixteen quarts of milk (wine measure) a day, for about eight months
after calving, when they fall off in milk, but gain in flesh, up to
calving-time. In this course of treatment the manure is far better than
the average, and his pastures are constantly improved. The average
amount of butter from every sixteen quarts of milk is twenty-five
ounces, a proportion far larger than the average. His investigations are
very full and complete.--See Appendix.
How widely does this course of practice differ from that of most
farmers! The object with many seems to be to see with how little food
they can keep the cow alive. Now, it appears to me that the milch cow
should be regarded as an instrument of transformation. With so much hay,
so much grain, so many roots, how can the most milk, or butter, or
cheese, be made? The conduct of a manufacturer who owned good machinery,
and an abundance of raw material, and had the labor at hand, would be
considered as very absurd, if he hesitated to supply the material, and
keep the machinery at work at least so long as he could run it with
profit.
Stimulate the appetite, then, and induce the cow to eat, by a frequent
change of diet, not merely enough to supply the constant waste of her
system, but enough and to spare, of a food adapted to the production of
milk of the quality desired.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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