MUST YOU KEEP A COW 75 



herd for the same place. The fertilizing superiority 

 of the cow is thus patent. Without cows the land 

 will run down, and do it so unostentatiously that 

 the damage as in most ills of malnutrition is 

 done before it is revealed. 



Proponents of the nuts-and-berries philosophy 

 have lately backed the goat as a stand-in for the 

 cow on the home-use lot. Goats are easier and 

 cheaper to shelter and to handle at breeding time; 

 per capita they are small eaters. Having said that, 

 you have said all that is good of them. Granted 

 their milk is high-class human food, yet it does not 

 taste that way, and it is unfit for butter. The twice- 

 a-day milking chore is one of the bugbears of a 

 home farm. I have heard it argued that goats are 

 easier to milk than cows. I would not know; I 

 have never milked either. Yet they too must be 

 milked twice a day. The difference in actual milk- 

 ing time (the preparation is about the same) is 

 a matter of two or three minutes per head. If milk- 

 ing must be done one might as well get something 

 more than a teacupful for the effort. 



Whole raw cow's milk comes close to being 

 the perfect human food. Note I say "whole" and 

 "raw." Whole milk is practically unknown to those 

 who buy their milk ready put up at the store. It 

 is that in which the butter fat content is left in- 

 tact, just as it came from the cow. Many communi- 

 ties prescribe the legal butter-fat content of differ- 



