54 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



the question of maternity, and no man has a right who re- 

 spects his mother to forget its existence, even down to the 

 lowest forms of life that God has made. 



They forget that they are in contact with the most sensitive 

 physiological machinery in existence — that of motherhood. 

 They think and act toward their cows as if they were so 

 many cast-iron machines. Such ideas lie at the bottom of a 

 large portion of so-called ill luck in the business. Physio- 

 logical results can only be had by the nse of physiological 

 understanding. M'.lk is the physiological result. The mys- 

 tery of these maternal functions is just as great in the bovine 

 mother as in the human mother. We have profound stu- 

 dents and great institutions of medical learning to evolve 

 the truth concerning the human mother, and still she is 

 very much an unsolved mystery. We have ignorance, blind 

 selfishness, and cruelty in many instances, and a lack of good 

 thinking quite generally to evolve the truth concerning this 

 bovine mother ; and, as if to add the cap-stone to our folly, 

 we wonder why her motherhood is not more profitable to us. 

 Let us remember one thing, and remember it devoutly : God 

 ruleth over all. His laws govern. If we persist in ignoring 

 or violating the laws that relate to the motherhood of the 

 cow, then we are sure to meet with a loss of success as a 

 punishment. Hence the necessity of being as gods, hnovnng 

 good practice from evil practice, and why one is good and 

 the other evil. 



I start with the supposition that every man desires only 

 good cows and that their goodness be maintained to his 

 largest profit. 



Pasture. 



A good pasture, one that is conducive to the most profit- 

 able results, is one that yields an abundance of sweet, nu- 

 tritious grass, with the least exertion possil)le on the part of 

 the cow. A poor pasture is one either short in food or that 

 yields poor food, or that requires too large an expenditure 

 of exercise to crop a day's ration. If either of these poor 

 conditions exists it may ]>e taken as an evidence of bad man- 

 agement, poor handling. Hiram Smith, the noted Wisconsin 

 dairyman, who successfully kept one hundred cows on two 



