No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 213 



milk to a slight extent; but we have hurt the quality of the butter far 

 more than we have helped the fat percentage. 



No Holstein cow can be wheedled into giving Jersey milk by any 

 normal rational feeding, unless it be by semi-starvation. A starv- 

 ing or half-fed cow is apt to make richer milk as a consequence of her 

 ill treatment — but far less of it. 



NERVOUS EXCITEMENT. 



Such conditions as may be provocative of nervousness have more 

 iurtuence upon the quality of milk than most people are apt to think. 

 I once heard a Maine dairyman say that in his judgment the best 

 thing on a dairy farm was a dt-ad dog, and that a coat of whitewash 

 in the barn was a close second to it. A dog once thoroughly killed 

 never again dogs cows, and thus one of the most common sources 

 of bovine agitation is removed. Milk-making is a nervous function 

 and in proportion as a cow becomes excited, in proportion as the 

 nerve force which should be concentrated upon milk making, is dis 

 tracted therefrom by any cause, dogging, horn-flies, abuse, noise, etc., 

 in that proportion there is likelihood — almost certainty — that the 

 milk flow will be influenced. If I remember right Gov. Hoard tried 

 a few years ago an experiment in this line. I believe he was the first 

 man to urge that a cow be treated as if she was a lady; but once 

 upon a time he abused a cow in order to know whether or not it would 

 affect the quality of the milk. The cow was milked about half 

 through and a sample of the latter portion of the milk was set aside; 

 then a heavy pin was raked across her flank. She made a jump into 

 the manger and was greatly excited. The milking was then finished 

 and a sample taken. There was a difference of fifteen per cent, in 

 the amount of butter fat in the two halves of the milk, a difference 

 of fifteen per cent, in the amount of fat eliminated by the nervous 

 equation. 



Another experiment in the same line: One of our western experi- 

 menters fired blank cartridges in front of the cows immediately be- 

 fore milking. The explosions decidedly affected the quality of the 

 milk. In our own experience an Ayrshire, temporarily in new and 

 noisy surroundings, increased the quality of the milk without de- 

 creasing the flow, while another Aj-rshire at the same time, treated 

 in exactly the same manner, did precisely the reverse and shrank 

 half in quality and a quarter in quantity. Anything that tends to 

 make a cow nervously excited will be apt to affect the milking func- 

 tion, as a rule, unfavorably. 



Why should we expect a cow or herd of cows always to give, week 

 after-week, the same quality of milk? Milk making is the cow's 

 work, just as agricultural investigation and teaching and executive 

 duties are my work, and the sundry farming operations, your work. 



