155 qts. Milk sold @ 7c. $ 10.85
311 qts. Skim-milk, @ 3c. 9.33
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Sales $ 20.18
620 qts. Milk for family, @ 7c. 43.40
123 lbs. Butter made, @ 35c. 43.05
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Year’s return $106.63
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Memorandum—Cost $103.37
Less sales 20.18
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83.19
Plus purchases—
88 qts. Milk 6.16
52 lbs. Butter 16.64
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Cow products cost family $105.99
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Here is a net balance of three dollars and twenty-six cents in favor of
the cow, without allowing anything for the abundant supply of skim-milk
and butter-milk which has been profitably used in the poultry yard as
well as at the house—or for the big compost heap, which could readily be
sold.
The figures also show that the family has had a better supply of cow
products than last year, at seven dollars and sixty-five cents less
expense. No labor is charged, for I am not so much keeping an exact
account of the maintenance of the cow, as of the profit of my keeping
one, taking care of her myself. And no credit is given for manure, as I
mean to apply that to reducing the cost of keeping in the future. The
cow might have been fed at less cost, but I intended to have her improve
on my hands, and she has done so. “June” now weighs seven hundred and
sixty-two pounds, is about to have her third calf, and is certainly worth
more than was paid for her.
Altogether, in spite of unfavorable conditions there is no occasion to
complain of the result of the year.
MAY 1ST, 1877.—Last spring, my neighbor, north, was willing to let me
have his acre and a half of meadow for pasturage, but wanted thirty-five
dollars for the season. I would not pay that, and, instead, hired a
place for “June” in a large pasture half a mile or more distant, paying
twenty dollars for the season, May fifteenth, to October fifteenth, and
four dollars to a boy for driving. On the ninth of May, the cow dropped
a bull calf without difficulty, and I gave it away the next day. No
special care was needed or given, except a little caution as to feeding,
and on the fifteenth the cow went to pasture. She did remarkably well
until early in July, being in pasture during the day, and at the stable
at night. Then the weather grew very hot, the pasture dry, and “June”
began to fail rapidly in her milk; so I commenced feeding a little bran,
and offered hay when she came up at night. Later, a friend recommended
cotton-seed meal, and a hundred weight of that was obtained and fed with
good results, two or three pounds a day. August was a month of intense
dry heat, and the pasture became of little use except for the exercise,
shade, and water. In spite of meal and hay fed at night, “June’s” yield
of milk shrank to three quarts a day, and we feared she would go dry.
August fifth, I made the change of sending her to pasture just before
six o’clock in the evening, as the boy went after the other cows, and
bringing her up to the stable in the morning, where I kept her during the
day. This was an improvement, and also gave better opportunity of feeding
sweet corn stalks, vegetable trimmings and the like, fresh from the
garden. The grain was continued through August, and she ate more or less
hay. At the end of the month she was giving over a gallon of milk a day.
Rains came early in September, the pasturage soon became good again, and
the daily mess of milk steadily increased until November. By that time
she was in the stable for the winter, and the treatment since has been
practically a repetition of last year. My root patch in the garden was
enlarged, as the result of last year’s experience, and accordingly I put
eight or ten bushels of carrots into my cellar in October, covering them
with sand, and left a fine lot of parsnips in the ground. I began feeding
the carrots in January, two or three a day, just for a relish; gradually
increased them, until in February the cow received half a peck or more,
and thus they lasted into March. Then I dried her off, getting the last
milk to use March twenty-eighth. Grain feeding was stopped the first of
March, and she has had none since. After the cow was fully dry, I began
on the parsnips, and she is now getting half a peck daily, with all the
hay she will eat. “June” will be fresh again on the twentieth of this
month.
The season has not satisfied me. Not only has the weather been
unfavorable, (we must expect severe summers occasionally,) but I don’t
like sending the cow to a distant pasture which I can know very little
about, and where nobody knows how the other animals treat her. I shall
never do this again if any other arrangement can be made.
The account for the year is as follows: