290 FIELD AND FERN. 



sible to look back over the books for more than six 

 years, and approximate within a fraction of what 

 every cow has been doing. Taking the average of 

 the largest week in the height of the grass, we find 

 that 702 milkings produced 8,1001bs. of milk, or 810 

 gallons, from which there came 39^ gallons of cream. 

 That Ayrshires differ very widely, may be seen by 

 comparing this nine-quarts-a-day average with Glen- 

 gall^ s, who averaged 12 quarts and a fraction daily for 

 fifty-eight successive weeks. For seven weeks, be- 

 tween May 7th and July 3rd, she averaged a trifle 

 beyond 6 gallons a day; and Colly Hill, who led in 

 1860-61, still gives 4 gallons at her best, and beat 

 them all save Marion last September. 



They generally begin with cooked food in Novem- 

 ber; and a two-horse power engine, with a corn 

 grinder, oil-cake bruiser, turnip pulper, and hay, chaff, 

 and straw-bedding cutters attached, is fixed in the 

 boiling room at the end of the byre. The four boilers 

 are filled with hay cut two inches long, rapecake, and 

 bean meal in layers, and then steamed; and the 

 large waggon, which runs on a tram-road with turn- 

 tables, bears two pails of mixture to every cow 

 per day. The four milkmaids have each a soap-box, 

 a towel, and a currycomb. After each milking they 

 scrupulously wash their hands, and they keep their 

 pets in winter as bright in their coats as a blood horse. 

 At one time it was the regular milkmaid fashion 

 to shift sides so as to balance the vessel, but it was 

 found to do no practical good, and the cow often be- 



