No. 4.] DAIRY CATTLE. 73 



The Management of Dairy Cattle. 

 It would not be possible, in a paper such as this, to go 

 over the whole ground of management. To do so would re- 

 quire a volume. I shall only attempt to dwell upon what 

 seems to me to be the weakest spots in the system, and which, 

 because they are weak, should be sedulously avoided. These 

 include: (1) the sacrifice of cows on the block that would 

 return a handsome profit in the dairy for years to come ; (2) 

 the loss of stamina resulting from improper methods of man- 

 agement ; (3) the great hazard incurred by those who from 

 time to time replenish their herds from outside sources. 



The Sacrifice of Cows. 



This sacrifice is of course greatest among those who may 

 be termed city dairymen, many of whom buy their cows and 

 feed, and at the end of the period of lactation send them to 

 the block. This accounts in part at least for the relatively 

 slow increase of cow t s in this country. Many of the cows thus 

 sacrificed have not yet reached the zenith of their usefulness. 

 The number of cows in the United States at the beginning 

 of 1907 was 20,908,265 ; and at the beginning of 1897", ten 

 years previously, it was 15,941,767. The increase in the ten 

 years was less than 32 per cent. Allowing for the necessary 

 culling of poor milkers, the increase in the time limit named 

 should have been several times 32 per cent. There would 

 seem to be no good reasons why the number of cows kept 

 should not be doubled say every five years, where this may 

 be desired. Those city dairies are great maelstroms, which 

 are forever drawing in good cows to premature slaughter. 

 Nor does there seem any way out of the difficulty until those 

 so engaged find that it will pay them to board extra good cows 

 for six to eight weeks before lactation without getting any 

 return. 



But some who are not city dairymen make the same mis- 

 take. They feed high, and get a direct return for everything 

 they feed. They chafe under the weeks of waiting for the 

 renewal of the lactation period ; hence even in these dairies 

 many a good cow is sent to the shambles, that, if retained, 



