FEEDING COWS DURING THE GRAZING SEASON.

Patea Mail, Volume IX, Issue 1121, 5 December 1883, Page 4

FEEDING COWS DURING THE GRAZING SEASON.

.(American Agriculturist.) >• Grazing dairy cows is the almost nniversiif practice of our farmers, without iny regard to the condition of.the grass, or the character of .the -.season. This practice is well enough where there is full teed, and the cows get all the food they can-digest. It is not economy on the great majority of our farms, especially in the older States.' As a rule the land devoted to pasture has been grazed for generations, has for many years received no manure except the droppings of the cows, and its best constituents have been carried off in the shape of milk, veal, and beef. The. cow is a machine for making milk and butter, and can no Inore yield those commodities without suitable and abundant forage than a grist mill can turn out meal without corn in the hopper. A certain portion of her food goes to keep her in good flesh. - This has the first claim, »n<i some pastures do little -more than meet this want. The. milk small hy degrees and beautifully less, until the cows dry up early in the fall. In other and better pastures, there is material for a good supply of milk for six months in the year, and the average yield of butter on our farms probably does not reach two hundred pounds per cow annually. With suitable addition to the rations gathered from the pasture, there is little doubt that the yield could be brought up to an average of three hundred pounds of butter a year per cow, with more profit in the last hundred pounds than in the first two hundred pounds. The capital invested in the cow, the milking and care of the milk ore about the same whether the yield of butter be two or three hundred pounds. The-e is additional expense for the food, and the labour of feeding. To offset this you have, besides butter, the better condition of the cow, a belter

calf, the additional quality of manure dropped upon the pasture, and in the stable,. and its better quality, to say nothing of the satisfaction of having a sleek, profitable and well-fed animal under daily observation. . Esthetics are worth something above pecuniary value. We are trying this - season i upon a thoroughbred Jersey cow, the experiment of daily rations of cotton seed meal, one quart in the morning, wheat middlings one quart, corn meal one quart at evening, in addition to pasture, and are surprised at the increase and excellence of the butter, and the growth of the manure heap.