The Jersey, Alderney, And Guernsey Cow - Their History, Nature And Management (1872) (Hardcover)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE ART OF FEEDING. It must be apparent to every thinking person that all the before-mentioned qualities, even in the highest perfection, will not ensure an abundant and rich supply of milk unless proper care is taken to furnish the cow with the kind of food best calculated to the required purpose. How often is it found that complaint is made by one person that such a cow is a bad milker, when the same animal, transferred to other hands, has given every satisfaction! This is easily explained by the fact that in the first case the cow has been kept on foul pasture or on improper food. It becomes, therefore, peculiarly necessary to set forth the manner of feeding which experience has proved to be the most advantageous for the production of rich and sweet milk. The first requisite in feeding is, that the animal should have abundance of food, so as to be able to consume all that she requires in as short a time as possible, as then she will lie down and have the more time to secrete her milk, and that milk to acquire richness. The pasture should be often changed, and if not in pasture the food should be succulent, otherwise fat instead of milk will be produced; but cows fed with food of too watery 104 a nature, which is the case with roots early in the season, require an addition of more solid food, such as meal or good clover chaff, otherwise the milk, although considerable in quantity, will be poor and wheyey, yielding no cream. Such roots should be carefully selected as have no symptoms of decay or rottenness, and should be mild in flavor or the butter will be tainted. In very cold weather, and as a change of food, use crushed linseed and bruised oats, steamed or boiled. Mangel-wurzel, which has become, from its luscious qualities, so favorite a food f...