The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1881-09-07
AGRICULTURAL
Feed the Cows.

An intelligent farmer said to us last week,
GAS most men keep their cows in the coun-
trv towns, the profitable dairy season is not
over three months long. As rule, our
COWS come in, in March, and the calves
90 to the butcher about the first of April.
Then for about two months and half we
get full flow of milk, but by the middle of
July the feed in the pastures dries up, and
from that time on, the cows must live on
brouse, weeds and little grass, and they
have to be very lively and lucky to get more
than enough of these to sustain life and fur
nish strength to fight the flies. The result is,
they dry up until they give but two or three
quarts each, at a milking. This scarcely
pays for driving them to pasture and getting
them, and for milking and taking care OF
the pals and pans. Then we get new flow
of a fortnight or three weeks when the cows
get into the fall feed, and that is all; and
when we figure up the business at the end
of the year we find, or should if we figured
each month separately, that we keep our
cows nine months out of twelve without
cent of profit. This is the reason why dairy
ing don't pay, and until we find some way
TO piece out our pasturing, it can't be
made to pay"
We believe that there is great deal of
suggestive truth in this statement. In the
neighborhood of cities where milk is raised
for market, and the business is in large
degree reduced TO science, tits generally
admitted that it is not profitable to compel
a COW to subsist on what she can pick up in
an ordinary pasture more than two months
in a year, and the dairymen feed their COWS
In the barn as regularly in August as they
do in January, thus securing full flow OF
milk for six or seven months, aud moder-
ate one for two or three more; and from this
extra feeding comes every cent of profit
made by these milk producers. But back in
the country people have not learned that
feed is the best breed of COWS, or, If they
have, they reason that the milk to be secured
by extra feeding will not pay the cost; and
cows are left to grub over worn-out and
parched pastures, getting barely food enough
TO keep them alive. This is all wrong.
No man in the city or country can afford
to keep poor COW, or to keep a good one
poorly: for the COW is merely a machine
for converting food into milk, and whenever
the machine is poor one, or the food scarce,
the product will be small. This is such
self-evident proposition that 1T need not be
argued, and it follows that, if it pays to keep
cows at all, it pays to keep them well. 1t
may be said that pasturing costs little, and if
ii Yields little there is no loss; but no one
will argue that it pays to feed from the barn
six months in winter in order to get three
months flow of milk in the spring, unless it
would pay still better to feed nine months
and get full mess all but three months in
the year; and, unless we can make the ends
meet by supplying our cows in some, way,
summer and winter, with all they will eat,
we might as well quit the business.
As to how best to supply the lack of good
pasturage from August until winter, de-
ponds upon the preparations that have been
made If a farmer has no green crops for
the purpose, he has no resource except to
feed grain or hay from the NOW. This is
expensive, and no farmer should allow him
self to be compelled to do it; but even this
is better than letting the cows go hungry,
and if we had two COWS, with barely fodder
enough to winter them, we should call it
good management to sell one and begin
now to feed our winter supply rather than
TO half starve them both until fall. The
standard green fodder in this section is
corn; for it is easily raised, and easily fed,
and the general experience goes to show
that is a valuable milk producing food. But
it is largely composed of water, the stalks
are often so large that stock cannot eat
them, and cows soon tire of it when it is fed
regularly and in large quantities, and it is
probable that other green crops, such as oats
and millet, might be proftably sown to
considerable extent Such crop can be
produced at small expense, and if grown
near the buildings, can be led with less Ia
Dor than would cure it for winter.
1t may be late in the season to discuss
such subject now, but we should be glad
to see it take prominent place in the club
debates next winter, as We are thoroughly
convinced that all our country farmers must
feed their cows much more literally than
they have been in the habit of doing. The
old pastures are no longer reliable, and we
must patch their bare spots with green fod-
der or leave milk-making to those where
grass is plentier.