350 On Dairy- Farming, 



tho dairy cattle, and clover, Italian ryegrass, vetches, and cabbage, 

 for tlieir use in summer and autumn. Without such drainage 

 cold clay-land cannot be cultivated in an efficient manner. 



The 200 acres of turf-land may be divided as follows : — 120 

 acres, in convenient enclosures, and well supplied with good 

 water, shade, and shelter, as the regular summer pasture for the 

 dairy cows ; 30 acres as permanent meadow, to be manured every 

 year, and mown for hay ; the remaining 50 acres, least con- 

 veniently situated, and least adapted for dairying, will provide a 

 summer's run for the yearling and two-year-old heifers, and farm- 

 horses, and for a moderate (juantity of sheep. By the use of cake 

 and crushed corn to the value of, say, 100/., fifty dairy-cows 

 would be well kept, besides rcarimj from twelve to twcntij heifer- 

 calves ever I J year. 



I lay particular stress upon this point in consequence of the 

 serious losses to which dairymen have been of late years subject 

 from infectious disease — a consideration which has acquired 

 additional force since the outbreak of the cattle murrain. The 

 foot and mouth complaint, which is very prevalent amongst drift 

 cattle everv spring, and highly contagious, is a very serious com- 

 plaint when it attacks cows in full milk ; and should the owner 

 be so I'ortunate as to escape the loss of any of the animals affected, 

 it still entails a great diminution in the yield of milk, even if the 

 animals are not lost. Again, from pleuro-pneumonia the dairy- 

 farmer has much more to fear than the grazier, because his 

 cattle are necessarilv congregated together, and they cannot l)e so 

 readilv disposed of to the butcher. When this disease attacks a 

 dairvman's herd, it is not uncommon for him at once to send 

 all tho apparently healthy animals for sale to a distant market, 

 and thus the disease is spread. 



JNIy father and myself have for manv years had upwards of 

 one hundred dairy-cows, l)ut by adopting the plan of rearing 

 a sufiicient number of heifer-cahes, and scarcely ever buying 

 stock in the market, we have been most fortunate in escaping 

 infectious disease. One or two partial attacks of the foot and 

 mouth complaint have occasioned us slight losses, but from more 

 serious disease we have altogether escaped. The spread of con- 

 tagious disease is greatly due to the filthy state of the trucks 

 used in the conveyance of cattle by railway. I regret that the 

 Cattle Diseases l^ill, introduced last session of Parliament, was 

 not allowed to become law. 



The greater portion of the cows calve in March and April. 

 The best and earliest of the heifer-calves are reared; they will 

 require their mothers' milk for two or three weeks at least, and 

 may then be fed either with skim-milk and oatmeal, or sweet 

 whey and wheaten or rice flour, with what hay and oilcake they 



