"THE HOME-BUILDER."

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XXII, Issue 2794, 24 May 1911, Page 3

"THE HOME-BUILDER."

" The good cow is a home-builder,' says "The Dairy," a profit-maker, a foundation for better living, a sureenough uplift for'the tanner and his family. She is a mother —a feeder of babes and a supporter of invalids. Being all' these thing,s and more, she has certain obligations due to her. She is entitled to be owned by a man who is as liberal as she, as careful as

she is good, as intelligent as she has needs and functions. We cannot expect to get so much ot good and value from the good cow and withhold from her the help she must have to do her best. We must not expect her to perform the duties of a mother and a feeder of our young and treat her as a steer. Her requirements are not that she shall be fed sumptuously every day, but she must every day be fed abundantly. She must not be asked to make bricks without straw, nor, on the other hand, be expected to make butter bricks with straw only. The good, generous work of the cow is an expression of her good feeling toward the world, and for it she is deserving of the kindness, gentleness, and justice that are expressions ot gentle breeding in man. The cow can take nothing more from her feed than nature put there or left there. What the feed lacks records what the man lacks, and as the feed fails the cow also fails the man in profit. It a farmer possesses a poor cowthat is one functionally incapable of ren-

dering a profit—is it the cow's fault if the man keeps her? She is no free agent that she may run away and fatten herself into cheap beet. The cow, ever tailing, may be doing the best she can, and the man, sinfully failing, doing the best he can. We have much to say in denunciation of the poor, the unworthy, the undeserving cow, bjt really the man is portrayed in his herd. The herd is usually on as high a level as the thought and deed of the owner; The herd, like a mirror, merely makes images, and so very often casts reflections. When well and properly fed, the cow ruminates most; when she is not well fed we need

to encourage the dairyman to ruminate more. No careful man need keep up a poor cow, but who shall count tor us the number of poor men who are hindering good cows irom doing better.