The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1897-11-24
AGRICULTURAL.
Keeping Up the Flow of MILK.

This is a difficult matter at this sea-
son of the year. The cows of most
farmers have been giving milk for sew
eral months. They got somewhat dried
up in midsummer, but when turned in
to fall feed picked up amazingly, but as
the feed gets short, the cows dry up
again and need extra feed to bring
them up again. To tell the truth there
is not much to encourage a man to put
extra feed into cows that have been
out in the cold wind and rains. We
don't know as it would pay to fuss much
with such cows, especially if they are
coming in in February or March. 1t
is the COW that has come in this fall
which pays best for extra care at this
time of the year. But it requires skill
to keep up the flow of milk in COWS
which have calved this fall. 1t is SO
easy to let them fall off, so hard to keep
them up to their best. A little expos
ure to the cold winds, irregularity in
feeding, milking at n hour one day
and another the next, a poorer quality
of feed, in fact there seems to be no
end to the things which cause a COW a
fall off in her milk flow.
One of the first requisites for a full
flow of milk is abundance of good feed.
There is no better feed for a COW in the
fall than silage made of well-eared
corn. This takes the place of the green
feed the COW has been accustomed to.
If she has to be taxed off fresh green
feed and put on to dry cornstalks and
hay, it will take lots of grain feed to
keep up the flow of milk. Over and
over again we wonder how men can get
along without silos. To make much
milk cow needs a good deal of succu-
lent feed. The ensilage just fills the
bill. Have corn with many ears OF it
in your silo, and it will remove half the
difficulties of keeping up the milk flow.
To go with this there is nothing better
than nice early cut clover hay. Then
there must be a grain ration, and it
should be something which will balance
the silage, not corr meal, but bran,
gluten, linseed meal, etc. And we
think that the best way to give the
grain ration is either to put it on the
silage, or to wet it or scald it.
We know that very little grain feed
is given wet in Vermont, but we think
that the COWS will give more milk on
wet than on dry grain feed. We find
that a great many of the milkmen give
soaked grain feed to their cows, and
from all we can learn, they get more
milk than those who give only dry feed.
1t is an axiom with a good many milk
men that the more water you can get
into a COW, the more milk you will take
out. But when we touch this We are
on debatable ground. We doubt very
much whether a COW would make any
more butter if fed on slop, but we know
acow will give more milk when thus fed.
Then comes the question whether rich
ness can be fed into milk. Of course
poorness can. Everybody knows that
thin, watery milk is not as rich as nice
milk made from solid food. But all
the scientific men say you cannot feed
richness into milk, 30 we may as well
accept their dictum, or else be anpopu-
lar.
A warm stable is one great element
of success in keeping up the flow of
milk in cold weather. A big crack
through which the cold wind can blow
upon a cow will knock off a good
many quarts of milk and pounds of but
ter. Turning COW u into the cold
wind to 60 to a frozen over brook to
drink will cause the milk 10 shrink.
We are not exactly a convert to the
continuous stabling theory, but it is
certain that if you want to get all the
milk possible, you must keep the cows
in most of the time. The comfortable
COW is the one that gives the most milk.