Meal fou Dairy Cows. 77 



when feeding fodder-corn, and tlirougli tlie fall and winter. 

 Bj feeding meal and shorts, cows can be kept in milk the 

 most of the winter, and a good quantity and quality of but- 

 ter mada. Bjsides, when nioal is fed, a greater number of 

 cows can ])e kept. It is estimated that one ton of mcnl is 

 worth nearly as .much as two of hay, as feed for wintering 

 stock, where butter is not taken into account. It has been 

 proved to us in the case of Miller of New York, and others, 

 that cows can be wintered on meal alone, and at a less cost 

 than on hay. But to show you more clearly that it pays to 

 feed meal, I will state a few facts in connection with my own 

 dairy and manner of feeding. My pastures are quite 

 limited, only sufficient to summer eight or ten cows without 

 the use of meal. The past season I have kept fourteen, (all 

 kept at home except two were away nine weeks, being dry 

 in the summer,) and have fed two quarts of meal, or its 

 equivalent in shorts, to each cow, for ten months, or while 

 they are giving milk, at a cost of $280, or $20 per cow, 

 allowing the meal to cost $40 per ton, which is a little more 

 than the average cost of meal. They have made, in the 

 past year, four thousand pounds of butter, a little less than 

 three hundred pounds per cow, which, at thirty-five cents 

 per pound, would be $1,400. 



Now I estimate, for I do not care to try the experiment 

 to obtain the facts, that did I feed no meal, I could not keep 

 more than twelve cows on the same land. Truly, $280 is 

 a great outlay for the keeping of two cow^s. But let us see 

 how the account stands. Two hundred pounds per cow, 

 wliicli would be a large estimate without meal, would pro- 

 duce two thousand, four hundred pounds, which, at thirty 



