Each morning, while “Spot” is eating her breakfast, she is well curried
with a curry comb or card, and if any filth is observed on her bag or
teats (which is very seldom), they are carefully washed off, if in
winter, with warm water. She is never scolded nor whipped; consequently
she never kicks over the pail, or holds up her milk. She is fed in winter
with a peck of sugar-beets cut up, both morning, noon, and night; also, a
bushel of cut feed, either corn-stalks or clover hay, wet with a pailful
of hot water, with two quarts of “sugar meal,” or bran, thoroughly mixed
together, with a little salt sprinkled over it. I generally use what is
known here as “sugar meal” to mix with her feed; it is corn meal from the
factory after the sugar or glucose has been extracted; it costs from ten
cents to twelve and a half cents per bushel, and I prefer it to bran,
and “Spot” likes it very much. We consider her a machine for converting
the food we give her into milk, and the more we can get her to eat and
digest, the more milk is obtained, and the greater the profit. It is
a good plan to change the food occasionally, substituting carrots for
beets, clover hay for corn fodder, for brutes, like mankind, are fond of
a variety. There are root-cutters that can be procured for cutting up
roots, but I have always used a common spade, ground sharp, and an empty
flour barrel to hold the beets. It takes but a few minutes to cut up a
mess of beets in that way.