248 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



fort. Provide your cows with a warm and thoroughly ventilated 

 stable, if you have to sell half the herd to do it. 



After you have provided facilities to keep the cows in full 

 vigor, and to economically feed and care for them, having provided 

 against waste of feed and bedding, take up the feed question. Al- 

 falfa and corn silage should come first on the list, but this is a 

 fitting time to urge the necessity of a good variety. Cows should 

 tat with a relish, and it is important that their meals be made 

 palatable. Alfalfa and silage will not satisfy them. They like a 

 change of diet the same as a person. When you decide on silage 

 do not strive to grow the greatest amount of fodder, but select 

 a variety that will give you a generous amount of foliage with the 

 largest per cent of grain possible. Silage is very bulky, and there 

 is a limit to the amount a cow can consume. You may fill her up, 

 and yet she may lack the essentials necessary to produce a liberal 

 flow of milk. 



Alfalfa hay is unexcelled, but very bulky, and the cow can not 

 reach her limit on it for this reason. With silage and alfalfa hay 

 some concentrated feeds like oil meal, cottonseed meal, ajax flakes, 

 gluten feed, ground barley or oats must be fed to do her best. If 

 you have twenty acres of clover and can not put it up right, cut the 

 piece in two. Cut it early when it will make prime feed and cure 

 it under caps. With most men clover hay is good enough when 

 cattle will eat it, but that is not enough if you are after results. 

 It is a rare sight to see a load of good clover hay, that is, good 

 milk producing feed. It pays to prepare a good seed bed for clover 

 as it does for corn and to put plenty of seed in the ground, insuring 

 a larger crop of finer quality. We are inclined to attempt more 

 than we can do exactly right, and with cows it does not pay. The 

 details decide the matter of profit. Be particular to grow choice 

 feeds, and buy the byproducts of mills to properly balance the 

 rations. Along with the feeding problem do not underestimate 

 the necessity of inducing a cow to drink large quantities of water. 

 It pays to warm the drinking water for your cows, but the next 

 best thing is to place a trough at the well and drop everything else 

 at regular times twice daily to coax the cows to the well and pump 

 as they drink. Ice cold water is responsible for much indigestion 

 in well fed cows. Last winter, for a time, I took the feeding at 

 the barn and wanted to increase our milk flow without buying 

 any cows. The cows were thought to be doing fairly well. During 

 the coldest weather we got more milk than in June on the best of 

 blue grass and some grain. I have a steam pipe leading from the 



