I never fed the cow any salt for health during the summer, but she kept
healthy, and the butter came. In the fall, I began feeding her the house
slops, night and morning, and when she did not eat them freely I put a
little salt in. When I thought she was not eating her fodder up clean
enough, I would sprinkle on a little brine with an old broom. I never fed
salt for her good, but sometimes for mine. In the fall, when I wanted her
to eat up weeds before they went to seed, I used occasionally to sprinkle
with brine such spots as I wanted eaten off closely. I never could make
my old lawn-mower cut off weeds any closer than grass, but this new
lawn-mower would eat these weed patches to the collars of the roots.
My cow became used to this kind of life, makes me no trouble, has
furnished the milk and butter for our family of four the whole year, and
some butter to send to my friends, and a little to sell. I have fodder
enough from my quarter acre to keep her until grass is abundant, and have
one dollar and twenty cents of the price of my calf still on hand.
I might go on and tell you how I used to buy hay at a high price for
wintering my cow, and quantities of bran, brewers’ grains and corn-meal;
how the hay always made her costive and hide-bound, and how she never
ate it with half the relish which she does the corn fodder; how I found
it an unladylike act to raise my foot and force the garden stake into
the ground, and so contrived a smaller iron that I could more gracefully
plant, and that no unruly cow ever could pull up; how with this new stake
I can safely leave her on the lawn all night with the fullest confidence
of finding her in the morning just where I left her, how when at first
the cow got loose and wandered to the garden, I discovered that the taste
of the butter was disagreeably affected by her eating certain herbs, and
how it was very pleasantly flavored by others; how I am cultivating these
herbs to make the sweetest and most golden butter; how—but dear me! for a
one-cow story it is already too long.
[Illustration: Fig. 23.—THE JERSEY COW “ABBIE.”]