FEEDING DAIRY-COWS. 89 



A[r. Reynolds, Member from Oxford. I have a small dairy, and 

 intend to keep more cows than I have for the past few years, for I 

 am satisfied that it is "very profitable. My mode of feeding is 

 much the same as Air. Bradbury's. Potatoes, in my experience, 

 are good to give a flow of milk, but you want meal to go with 

 them, to give a better quality to the butter. Roots I find to be an 

 excellent provinder, and perhaps the beet spoken of is better and 

 sweeter than the potato.- 



Mr. GiLMAN. I would like to know whether the practice of feed- 

 ing concentrated food, like Indian meal, or meal and shorts, has 

 been found to be injurious to stock where it has been continued for 

 a series of years — whether it has a tendency to produce garget ? 



IIox. Timothy Williams, Member from Knox county. I have 

 been in the habit of feeding my cows in the winter on hay and 

 fine feed. I get the best quality of fine feed, that which has the 

 most flour in it. I cut the hay in the morning, heat the water, 

 pour it on scalding hot, and mix the fine feed with it. I never 

 knew it to injure a cow, I give about four quarts per day to a 

 cow. I calculate to keep my cows in winter in the same way 

 always. I never turn out my cows in the spring until there is 

 plenty of grass. I never had any gargety cows. I have always 

 had a good flow of milk from my cows, and made a good quantity 

 of butter. A year ago last June T had two cows, and the neigh- 

 bors wanted to know bow much butter they would make during 

 the thirty days of June. We kept an account of it, and besides 

 the milk used in the family they made 135| lbs. of butter, or 2| 

 lbs. apiece per day. We called that pretty good, until I went up to 

 the State fair and saw a man who told me that he did a good deal 

 better. Since that I havn't told my story. To feed a cow about 

 as high as you can and not injure her is, I think, the true idea of 

 feeding. 



Mr. D. M, Dunham of Bangor, Member at Large. When we 

 met at Waterville, some of you will recollect that Mr. Percival 

 told us that he made some 900 lbs. of butter from two cows. We 

 wanted to know how he had kept them ; and one part of it was, 

 that he allowed them to drink no cold water in the winter. Mr. 

 King had some good stock at our fair one year. I was inquiring 

 in March about some steers, and he told me they were seven in- 

 ches larger in girth than when he showed them at the fair. He 

 said he had given them what good hay they wanted to eat, and 

 what warm water they wanted to drink. If I wanted my cows to 



