278 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



pure stock should entertain doubts as to such excess of profit, 

 or hesitate as to making an outlay which seems to them of 

 questionable expediency. Such hesitancy and doubt will dis- 

 appear in due time ; and when the supply of pure-blooded stock 

 shall equal the demand, and prices rule at reasonable rates, the 

 nondescript animals now ycleped " native cows " will become as 

 rare on our farms as the spindle and distaff are in our dwellings. 



It is presumed that all the heifers on exhibition are intended 

 for milch cows. To make them good cows, something more is 

 needful than unquestionable pedigrees. Whether a heifer 

 should drop her first calf at two years old, or at three, has not 

 been, and cannot be, determined by experiment, because the 

 trial can never be made with the same animal. Theory, and 

 observation also, so far as it can be relied upon, suggest that a 

 heifer intended for breeding purposes, especially one from which 

 bulls or oxen are to be raised, should not come in until three years 

 old, as she will then be mature and vigorous, — conditions which 

 will be likely to influence her progeny. A heifer intended for 

 a dairy cow, if of average growth, may well come in a year 

 earlier. In a heifer not having had a calf, the muscles of the 

 neck and fore shoulders are very apt to thicken unduly, during 

 her third year, and the udder to become distended with flesh 

 instead of milk veins. If, by having a calf at two years old, she 

 loses somewhat in the possibilities of growth, it will be because 

 her subsequent developments are of milk-producing, instead of 

 muscle-producing properties. 



For a week before and a week or two after calving, the food 

 of a heifer should be less nutritious than usual, rather than 

 more so, and of a kind not promotive of the secretion of milk. 

 The tendency to fever, and the pain and danger arising from 

 prematurely distended milk veins, may be avoided by the 

 exercise of discretion as to the quality and quantity of the food 

 given. 



While a heifer should always be kindly treated, she should 

 never be petted, else, like a spoiled child, she will become dis- 

 agreeable, possibly dangerous. She must be taught that her 

 keeper is master, but she should never be taught in anger. 

 Before calving, she should be rubbed about the legs and udder ; 

 and if this is done gently and kindly, she will quickly come to 

 like it. The greatest liability to acquire vicious habits arises 



