The Treatment of Dry Cows.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 24, 28 July 1894, Page 4

The Treatment of Dry Cows.

— w — It is the usual practice when a cow goes dry to turn her one into a poor and generally over stocked paddock, where she is expected to recruit her bones and her strength for another milking season. This sort uf treatment is unfair to the cow and unprofitable to her owner. When cows are dry they should be given the best grass on the place instead of the worst. After yielding; milk for perliaps eight or nine months tbe animal's system is worn down and impoverished, and requires building up with good food and nourishment. The cow that is starred during the time she is dry has not that substance within on which she secretes milk, and yields according to her condition. Nature is never deceived, and the farmer who expects to save or gain something by half starving his cows during their dry period is only deluding himself. It pays far better, as experienced dairymen have discovered, to teed the cows just a= well when they are dry as when milking. The feet has often been noted that when a cow comes in full flesh and vigor she invariably holds out well in her milk. She continues to be profitable for a much longer period than if she were poor in condition) and all the while she is milking trives ft greater quantity of milk. This is the effect ot feeding. A poor, illnourished cow, low in condition, does not possess the materials from which milk is produced, just as when the fuel gets scarce the fire goes out. The way dry cows are sometimes treated is not calculated to fill the pail for any length ot time, and yet the cow — honest creature that she is — though doing her best, is blamed for delinquency of which she is not guilty, farmers who want to have lots of milk Bnd butter next summer and obtain a supply right iuto the following winter, are now feeding their cows liberally. If they have not a good pasture paddock tor them, they take care to provide them with extra.food in the shape of ensilage, or roots, or chaff and bran, or cheap grains.