TUKN OUT EARLY IN SPRING. 21 



the spring than if you keep yoiii* stock yarded up until 

 the middle of May. Why, gentlemen, I think that the man 

 who will keep his cows confined in his yard or his stable until 

 the middle of May ought to go to jail. I won't say that he 

 ought to go to Ludlow-strcet jail, where our friend Victoria 

 is, but to some decent sort of a jail. It is advantageous to 

 the cow as well as to the pasture. You turn a cow out as 

 soon as the grass starts in the spring, and then continue to 

 feed her hay as you did through the winter, as long as she 

 will eat it, and roots as long as she desires them, and you 

 make the change so gradual from hay to grass that the cow 

 hardly realizes it, or is in any way affected by it. I tell you, 

 gentlemen, it is a bad practice to shut a cow up in the barn 

 until she cau get a full feeding of fresh and nutritious gi-ass, 

 and take her off in the morning from her hay and change her 

 right on to a pasture. Although not all the ill effects may be 

 discovered at first, in a few months 3^our cow may have an 

 attack of garget, and the cause and effect have been so far 

 removed from each other by intervening time that you fail to 

 trace the connection l)etween them; yet it certainly exists. 

 The milk-producing organs are terribly overtaxed, and the 

 cow feels it when she takes hold afterwards. There is less 

 danger, however, in turning a herd of dairy cows into a fresh 

 pasture that have been wintered on grass than a herd of dairy 

 cows that have been wintered on hay. And in speaking of 

 grass and hay here, I design to convey the idea that a cow 

 ought to be wintered on grass as well as summered on grass. 

 Let me explain mj^self : cut your meadow while it is grass ; 

 do not wait until it is changed iuto that woody fibre that we 

 call hay. Cut your meadows while they are grass, you know, 

 and you have dry grass to winter y6ur cows on. I make this 

 explanation, also, that you may not be muddled about any- 

 tliiug I say afterwards. 



Your pastures probably fail to produce a sufficient amount 

 of grass for your cows in August, sometime^ in July. Is that 

 the case here in Barre ? 



Several Yoices. Oftentimes. 



Mr. Harris. You probaljly sow corn to feed them. I am 

 not much of an advocate for corn, gentlemen. I tried corn 

 five years and concluded I would let my corn go to grass. 



