Butter and milk are not only luxuries, but in many families they are
indispensable necessaries of life. In this article my principal purpose
is to show how a cow can be kept with the greatest economy of land and
labor. I consider these the essential points in the discussion. Where hay
is dear and pasture scarce, a man who lives by the labor of his hands,
cannot ordinarily afford to purchase the necessary food for a cow; and
if he has only an acre or two of land at his disposal, he finds it more
profitable to raise other products. Ordinarily it requires the yield
of several acres of land to support a cow. But I propose to show that
this can be done on less than one acre, by raising the proper crops,
and treating the soil to the best advantage. A cow of ordinary size
will consume about eleven thousand pounds of hay, or its equivalent,
in a year. The equivalent of this amount of hay is—in potatoes, thirty
thousand eight hundred pounds, or five hundred and thirteen bushels,
and in Indian corn, seven thousand seven hundred pounds, or one hundred
and thirty-seven bushels. These quantities cannot be raised on one
acre, and if we examine the tables of equivalents of food, we find that
most of the grasses, grains, and roots, are objectionable on account of
unproductiveness, want of sufficient nutritive qualities, or of the labor
that the cultivation of them requires.