American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1874-07-25
A Plea for the Cows.

READER, are you fond of milk? Do
you like butter or beef Then have
compassion on the kind, generous COW,
Most farmers feed their horses something
better than straw or badly-cured hay in
the winter, though their work during
that season is light. Horses are usually
kept in comfortable stables, with clean,
dry bedding, renewed every nj ght. They
are also curried and brushed every morn
ing, and fed good hay, oats, chop, etc,
until they are {" fat as FOOLS" - if they
were being prepared for the butcher, in
stead of being kept for labor. This is
curious philosophy \ fat man is not in
IA condition to endure hard work, nor is
he as comfortable or healthy as person
in moderate flesh
1t will usually be found that those who
thus overfecd their horses are the very
men who starve their cattle. In summer
they are turned into the woods lot, the
fallow field or the highway; while the
horses are always lin clover" In winter
the milch COW runs the road by day, and
at night lies or stands shivering in the
wet or muddy barnyard, or is treated to
the luxury of Il snOwbank for "a bed. She
eats straw and corn fodder, with an oc-
casional frozen pumpkin, And yet she is
expected to yield daily gallons of that
most Indispensable article of food, milk.
Is it strange that she grows poor, or that
her calf is unthrifty? If we have no
compassion for the cattle, and disregard
the divine command to treat them with
kindness, considerations of pecunary
interest ought to correct this cruel and
inhuman practice.
A COW that is poorly fed cannot give
much milk, nor milk of Il good quality,
for the plain reason that it is among the
most nutritious of all the substances we
consume, and cannot therefore be manu-
featured from food that does not contain
nutritious elements.
Some farmers instruct their wives that
"corn must not be fed to the cows, be-
cause it dries them up" But the women
God bless them,-have compassion
upon the kind and docilc animal upon
whose system such severe drafts are being
constantly made, and therefore insist
upon furnishing food that will repair this
waste.
High feeding for cows in milk pays as
well as generous feeding for steers. Let
us see. Milk sells readily in the country
villages for four cents quart, while in
the cities it brings higher price. Sup
pose the COW to give three gallons day,
we have fortyeight cents, or something
over fourteen dollars per month, as the
value of her product. What other ami
NAL will make such generous returns for
food, care and generous feeding?
If we consider the profits resulting
from raising the calves for steers We
shall have reasons equally conclusive in
favor of generous keep. Whether mar
kets be good or bad the well-kept steer,
in good form and of good quality, al
ways sells ut profit to the breeder. But
we cannot have good form, good condi-
ton, and good quality where the calf was
not properly started runted calf be
comes paunchy" and unthrifty, form
which subsequent good keep will seldom
correct.
The true principle therefore is, if we
regard the matter only in pecuniary
point of view, to feed well, feed as much
as possible indoors, and we shall have
more manure; and the manure where
the cattle are well fed will be of better
quality Our land needs the manure as
much as our cattle need the nutritious
food; and thus it is, as the English say,
the more we feed the more we can pro
duce We should never feed in the high
way. If we cannot feed indoors we
should certainly feed on our own land,
and aim to select IA place where it will
do the most good.-T. G. d., IN Nattoh"l
Lire .Stock Journul.