FEEDING DAIRY COWS. 91 



I hope that in future there may be something that will save the 

 farmers the expense of Western shorts. If there is to be a new 

 departure, I believe it will be in this direction. 



Mr. \V, W. Harris of Portland. I am a little interested in the 

 milk question. I keep a few cows and sell milk. I sell to the 

 retailer, who sells again to the customer, and so I only get about 

 half the money. My cows are natives, and the way I keep them 

 I average a fraction over $100 per year from them. I use a car 

 load of shorts a year — twelve tons — have it delivered on the car 

 at my farm. I keep six or seven cows. I feed some meal and 

 gome beets. I feed shorts liberally, and think they pay. My idea 

 is, that if 3'ou mix your concentrated feed with your hay for cows 

 giving milk, you want about as much hay as the cows would eat 

 without it. 



Mr. Work. I have ten grade cows, some of them pretty high 

 grades. I find they will bear more grain than any other class of 

 stock I ever kept, and do better. The best cows I have are half 

 or three-quarters Jersey. I feed liberally. I feed an old cow more 

 than a ycjiing one, and a cow in milk more than a cow that is 

 dry. 



Mr. Mallett. I was thinking, while listening to the remarks 

 made, how things have changed within the last ten years, in re- 

 gard to cows. We have thousands of acres of meadow land in this 

 vicinity ; we are of rather a lazy nature, and I don't know but it 

 is superinduced by this meadow hay. I think at any rate we don't 

 raise as much English hay as we should if we had not relied ou 

 the meadows. This meadow hay was poor fodder for milch cows 

 fifteen or twenty years ago, and we never thought of milking 

 through the winter a cow that was to calve in the spring. If we 

 wanted to have milk in the winter we had to have a farrow cow. 

 There is just about as much difTorence in the cows to-day as com- 

 pared with those of that time, as there is in the feed. There is no 

 necessity of keeping a farrow cow now ; the cows give milk 

 through the winter by giving a little provender. A portion of ray 

 cows I don't dry up at all. I have a cow that I suppose there is 

 not provender enough in Sagadahoc county to make her give milk 

 all winter if with calf. There is that difference in cows. 



Mr. Work. If I am a little short of milk I add a few shorts to 

 the four quarts, but don't vary my one quart of meal. I can't tell 

 how much hay I feed, but what the cows will eat. I have four 

 cows in my stable that have not been dry for four years. 



