50 BRITISH DAIRYING. 



This, indeed, has much to recommend it, and is done by farmers 

 here and there. In hotter countries than ours it is done pretty 

 generally. 



Whenever storms of wind and rain occur, the same prac- 

 tice may with advantage be adopted for the time being. In 

 the late autumn and early winter months especially such storms 

 are of common occurrence, and they come at other times as 

 well. Shelter at these times is not only humane but judicious : 

 humane, because the cows are saved from suffering ; judicious, 

 because they make a return for it in undirriinished usefulness. 

 But it only too commonly occurs that the much-neglected cow 

 has to gnaw up the last vestiges of pasture-grass and to lie on 

 the sodden soil when she ought to be at all events in the 

 night-time in a dry shippon and properly cared for. 



That the fleshy condition of cows should be kept up in the 

 autumn everybody will admit, and yet almost everybody neglects 

 it. If a cow enters the winter in low condition and at a time 

 when a six months' calf is being nourished in her womb, she will 

 probably remain in the same state until summer comes again. 

 How can such a cow be expected to milk well after her calf is 

 born ? 



There can be no wisdom, no saving, no common mercy in 

 starving cows in the fall ; and, to avoid starving them, a plentiful 

 supply of autumn food must be provided. Indeed, the danger 

 of starving cows in the fall appertains only to the ordinary 

 British system of depasturing them through the season ; it 

 could hardly occur on the arable and soiling system at all, for 

 in this case the animals would at all events always lie warm 

 and dry. 



The loss arising from a scanty supply of grass on the pastures, 

 which compels cows to walk further and work harder in order 

 to supply their need, is greater than most people think; and no 

 one has at present, so far as I am aware, given more than an 

 approximate estimate of it, if even that. In a previous chapter 

 I have said that some two-thirds of what a cow eats goes to 

 maintain the temperature of the body, to repair the waste of 

 bodily tissue, and to sustain the functions of the system. This 



