I think it cruel to keep cows tied up all summer. They do not require
much exercise, but fresh air they must have, and it is a great comfort
to them to lick themselves, although they ought to be well curried every
day. It is better to milk after feeding, as they stand more quietly.
Don’t allow your milk-maid to wash the cow’s teats in the milk pail, a
filthy habit much in vogue. Insist on her taking a wet cloth and wiping
the cow’s bag thoroughly before she commences to milk. A cow ought to be
milked in ten minutes, although the first time I undertook to milk alone,
I tugged away for an hour. I knew how much milk I ought to have, and I
was bound to get it. An old cow will eat more than a young one, but will
give richer milk. If you can get a cow with her second calf, you can keep
her profitably for five years, when she should be sold to the butcher.
There is nothing that will keep your cow-shed so neat, and add so much
to the value of your manure pile, as a few shovelfuls of dry earth or
muck thrown under the cow. It will absorb the liquid manure better than
anything else. Don’t allow your milk pans to be appropriated for all
sorts of household uses; you cannot make sweet, firm butter if the milk
is put into rusty old tin. Skim the milk twice a day into the stone
churn; add a little salt, and stir it well every time you put in fresh
cream. Use spring water, but don’t allow ice to come in contact with the
butter; it destroys both color and flavor. If your cream is too warm,
the butter will come more quickly, but it will be white and soft. When
the cream is so cold that it takes me half an hour to churn, I always
have the best butter. Don’t put your hands to it, work out the buttermilk
with a wooden paddle, and work in the salt with the same thing. There
is an old saying that one quart of milk a day gives one pound of butter
a week, and I think it’s a pretty fair rule, but don’t expect to buy a
cow that will give you thirty quarts of milk a day. There are such cows
I know, but they are not for sale. Be quite satisfied if your cow gives
half that quantity. Place the cow’s food where she cannot step on it,
but don’t put it high up; It is natural for them to eat with their heads
down. I think it is better that the family cow should have a calf every
year, provided you can have them come early in the spring or late in the
autumn. As to the time that a cow should be dry, that depends much upon
the way the cow was brought up. If she was allowed to go dry early in the
season with her first calf, she will always do it. A cow being a very
conservative animal, she should be milked as long as her milk is good.
When she is dry, stop feeding the provender, bran, and oil-cake, and give
her plenty of good hay, with some roots, until after she calves. The
provender and oil-cake being strong food, are apt to produce inflammation
and other troubles at calving time. You can feed turnips when she is dry,
at the rate of two pails a day, cut up fine, of course, but don’t feed
turnips when she is milking. I have tried every way to destroy the flavor
of turnips in milk, but without success. I have boiled it, put soda in
it, fed the cow after milking, but it was all the same—turnip flavor
unmistakable—and as we don’t like our butter so flavored, I only feed
turnips when the cow is dry.
The Rev. E. P. Roe in his delightful book called “Play and Profit in
My Garden,” says: “If a family in ordinary good circumstances, kept a
separate account of the fruit and vegetables bought and used during the
year, they would, doubtless, be surprised at the sum total. But if they
could see the amount they could and would consume if they didn’t have
to buy, surprise would be a very mild way of putting it.” The same rule
applies to the keeping of a cow. We buy one quart a day and manage to
get along with it. Our cow gives us ten to twenty quarts a day and we
make way with the greater part of it. I think with a cow and a garden,
one may manage to live, but life without either, according to my ways of
thinking, would be shorn of many of its pleasures.
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