KEEPING ONE COW. 115 



growth of the cow, or the value of her manure, which was an am- 

 ple compensation for the care of keeping. 



Had I estimated the value of her milk at the retail price, I 

 should add one cent per quart for summer, and two cents per 

 quart for winter. The next year this same cow, with the increase 

 of the equivalent of one and a half pounds of meal per day, to 

 allow for her increased growth, and a slight deviation in the mat- 

 ter of feed during the summer, whereby she obtained more green 

 food, of which I shall speak hereafter, increased her profit almost 

 forty per cent. 



GARGET. 



Of one thing I am very careful, and that is, not to allow the in- 

 flowing milk, previous to calving, to harden in the udder, and hi 

 all my long experience, in owning cows, I have never had a case of 

 garget. When I was a boy about twelve years of age, my father 

 purchased a very large milker for those days. I noticed that the 

 right hind quarter of her udder was much smaller than the other, 

 and yielded a correspondingly less quantity of milk. After she 

 had. been dried off, and the time approached for her to calve, I 

 observed that this same quarter of her udder became very much 

 more distended than the others. Her whole udder was very much 

 distended, but this quarter excessively so. As her period of calv- 

 ing was delayed, and her udder became more inflamed, producing, 

 evidently, great pain to the cow, I asked the privilege of milk- 

 ing her, and was denied. At the same time I was given to 

 understand that it was the worst possible thing that could be 

 done for the cow ; that it was necessary that her udder should 

 become thus distended, in order to give it the capacity to contain 

 the flow of milk after calving; that should she be milked before 

 calving, the yield after calving would be very much lessened, etc. 

 By the time she calved, her udder was one indurated mass, and 

 that particular quarter of it so much inflamed that she could not 

 bpar to have the calf touch it. In the course of time, however, by 

 copious applications of cold water, and various liniments, the in- 

 flammation was reduced, but that particular section of the udder, 

 which had been sufficiently distended to hold her whole yield, was 

 shrunken to its old dimensions, and was no larger than when I 

 first saw her. When the time approached for her to drop her next 

 calf, I took the responsibility of clandestinely milking her, so that 

 when she calved there was no inflamed udder, there was no fussing 

 with liniments. Its four quarters were now evenly developed ; the 

 only difference was the former shrunken quarter was larger, if 



