YALE AGRICULTURAL LECTURES. 87 



Cows are generally bought just after the second calving, 

 though a good cow is bought at three or four years old and at 

 any season. They are milked from three to four years; though 

 only the longer period when their good qualities seem to war 

 rant it. They go dry from two to three months in the year, 

 and by skill in selection they average twenty quarts per day, 

 when fresh. The breed preferred is a cross, half Shorthorn 

 and half Highland, a sort plenty in that vicinity. He generally 

 pays about $75 per head. The -cows are kept in good order, 

 Mr. Horsfall maintaining that his success depends on this, and 

 that at the end of a cow's sixth year, when her milking quali 

 ties begin to fail, he has an animal ready, by a little "finish 

 ing," for the butcher, thus getting both the milk-man's and the 

 stall-feeder's profit out of the same animal. But it is the man 

 agement of the pasture and meadow-lands which claims our 

 special attention. Fourteen acres of meadow can pasture 

 twenty cows and twenty-four sheep, with a little assistance, 

 till the middle of October. Another lot of twenty acres, every 

 foot of which the cattle will eat, has usually supported one 

 bullock and a sheep and a half to each acre. To these pastures 

 the stock is not admitted until the grass is well up, this being 

 a security against drouth. Previous to this they graze in the 

 mowing lands, which are cut down close by them, but which 

 produce at the end of June two tons and a half to the acre, 

 besides a second crop, or after-math. 



The best pasture is a deep alluvial loam, but the meadow, 

 an irrigated one, is a thin soil, and a stony clay. The irriga 

 ting water is the sewerage of the village of Burley flowing into 

 a small brook which is turned on to the meadow at the highest 

 point, and conducted in channels to all parts of it. It runs on 

 during the winter ; is turned off in the spring to allow of graz 

 ing ; turned on again to start the grass, then off to harvest it, 

 and on again to start the second crop. The " little assistance " 

 which the pastures have in supporting these animals, is a small 

 quantity of cooked food, when the feed begins to foil in Au- 



