VETERINARY PROBLEMS. 49 



Mr. Everett. Sixty or seventy years ago, there was 

 nothing of this disease. Before we began to practise this 

 high feeding, which has been brought about by the sale of 

 milk in the great cities, abortion was unknown. But wheth- 

 er high feeding has caused abortion in our cows or not, at 

 any rate, before we began to feed high, we had no abortion, 

 and since we have fed high, with meal and the most nutri- 

 tious food we could cram into the cow's stomach, to make 

 the most money out of her we could, we have frequent cases 

 of abortion. When we fed on hay and roots we had no 

 abortion ; but now, when our cows are fed with this highly 

 nutritious food, we have abortion. My impression is that 

 high feeding is the cause of it : I cannot avoid that conclu- 

 sion. 



Mr. Sessions. I do not feed as high as some of the farm- 

 ers of the Connecticut Valley, but I have a neighbor who 

 keeps a herd of cows in the old-fashioned way. He was born 

 in Canada and he keeps them in the Canadian manner. They 

 get what they can in the pasture, and he gets what milk he 

 can from them. During the winter he keeps them on hay 

 and corn fodder ; they do not see grain from one year to an- 

 other. He has had eight cases of abortion in the last year 

 and a half: some in the pasture, some in the barn. I have 

 had two in my whole experience, — five and six years ago, 

 I keep twenty-five cows and he keeps about ten. 



Question. Will you tell us how you feed your cows ? 



Mr. Sessions. To a cow in maturity, with a full flow of 

 milk, I intend to give two quarts of cotton-seed, two quarts 

 of Indian meal, and six quarts of bran, a day. 



Mr. Russell. I am unable to unravel this net of contra- 

 dictions which you have made here ; but there is one point 

 that has been brought to my attention of late that may have 

 an important bearing upon mitigating the loss that we sufier 

 from abortion. I am told that abortion commonly ceases in 

 any animal after three times. This may not be a well-estab- 

 lished fact and lacking proof, because, when cows begin to 

 abort, they are usually turned into beef. But of late years 

 some cows have become so valuable for pedigree, that they 

 have been kept even after three times aborting, and it is on 

 record that after three times manv cows have recovered and 



