14 KEEPING ONE COW. 



will keep your cow-shed so neat, and add so much to the value of 

 your manure pile, as a few shovelfuls of dry earth or muck thrown 

 under the cow. It will absorb the liquid manure better than any- 

 thing else. Don't allow your milk pans to be appropriated for 

 all sorts of household uses ; you cannot make sweet, firm butter 

 if the milk is put into rusty old tin. Skim the milk twice a cay 

 into the stone churn ; add a little salt, and stir it well every time 

 you put in fresh cream. Use spring water, but don't allow ice 

 to come in contact with the butter; it destroys both color 

 and flavor. If your cream is too warm the butter will come more 

 quickly, but it will be white and soft. When the cream is so cold 

 that it takes me half an hour to churn, I always have the best 

 butter. Don't put your hands to it, work out the buttermilk with 

 a wooden paddle, and work in the salt with the same thing. 

 There is an old saying that one quart of milk a day gives one pound 

 of butter a week, and I think it a pretty fair rule, but don't expect 

 to buy a cow that will give you thirty quarts of milk a day. There 

 are such cows I know, but they are not for sale. Be quite satisfied 

 if your cow gives half that quantity. Place the cow's food where 

 she cannot step on it, but don't put it high up ; it is natural for 

 them to eat with their heads down. I think it is better that the 

 family cow should have a calf every year, provided you can have 

 them come early in the spring or late in the autumn. As to the 

 time that a cow should be dry, that depends much upon the way 

 the cow was brought up. If she was allowed to go dry early in 

 the season with her first calf, she will always do it. A cow being 

 a very conservative animal, she should be milked as long as her 

 milk is good. When she is dry stop feeding the provender, bran, 

 and oil-cake, and give her plenty of good hay, with some roots, 

 until after she calves. The provender and oil-cake being strong 

 food, are apt to produce inflammation and other troubles at calv- 

 ing time. You can feed turnips when she is drj T , at the rate of two 

 pails a day, cut up fine, of course, but don't feed turnips when she 

 is milking. I have tried every way to destroy the flavor of tur- 

 nips in milk, but without success. I have boiled it, put soda in it, 

 fed the cow after milking, but it was all the same turnip flavor 

 unmistakable and as we don't like our butter so flavored, I only 

 feed turnips when the cow is dry. 



The Rev. E. P. Roe in his delightful book called "Play and 

 Profit in My Garden," says : "If a family in ordinary good cir- 

 cumstances, kept a separate account of the fruit and vegetables 

 bought and used during the year, they would, doubtless, be sur- 



