A WORD FOR THE COW

Shannon News, 30 November 1926, Page 3

A WORD FOR THE COW

“HARDEST-WORKED ANIMAL.” A SUGGESTED holiday. Perhaps the hardest-working animal on the farm is the high-producing, profitable dairy cow. Her work is constant. It is nervous work, for motherhood and the production of food for young, the natural function of a daiy cow, it must not be overlooked, is a drain upon the system, especially when improper feeding is practised. The producing cow is a hard-working animal, and where production is maintained throughout a year, or ten months, of perhaps even longer than a year, it is a severe drain upon the cow’s vital energy. Of coarse, if the cows are only of the scrub variety, those mongrels which survive with their skin and bones on withered grass in winter aiid burned up pasture in summer, and whatever they can find to eat along the roadside or manage to reach through dilapidated wire fences, this contribution does not apply. Those kind of cows, with the kind of care and feed outlined, would be better off dead than with. a vacation. What would they do? asks a writer in the Jersey Bulletin. ' A Holiday on Full Feed.

But we are speaking of the highproducing 1 , profitable dairy cows. And we beseech for her a holiday. A month o#six weeks or two months’ complete rest from her milk-producing, work, And on full feed until near calving time. During the cow’s resting period, when she is on vacation, merely loafing in the shade of the biggest tree in the pasture or perchance browsing down by the creek, let her have the same abundance of nourishing feeds that you give to her herd sisters who are producing milk. A holiday for a cow wouldn’t be a holiday, in fact, unless she were well fed. What does a cow enjoy? Ask yourself the question. And then answer it. Well, we imagine that she enjoys her work. That while she goes through most of the year giving us her wonderful food in abundance, that it may give sustenance to somebody’s baby, or strength to some invalid lying in a hospital, or helping some strong man to recover from a serious illness, or keeping some elderly person in strong and rugged body and active mind, she is happy. One thing is in her favour; her work comes naturally to her, and if she is kept in good health her appetite seems always keen. And then she must enjoy the spring pastures, and the cool of the pastures on summer nights when she may, be allowed to graze after the heat of the sun has been abated by the shadows of evening. And we think she must enjoy philosophising, for she lies so' still, so contented looking, chewing her cud.