CABBAGES FOR COWS. 81 



measure, to the mode of feeding practised in those dairies. 

 Take it in the summer season, cows fed in pastures that produce 

 clover luxuriously will always produce a better quality of milk 

 than cows sent to pastures where there is nothing but June 

 grass. And it is just so with feed, at whatever season of the 

 year. If cows are fed a good while on corn meal they will not 

 give so large a flow of milk as when fed on lighter foods. Lighter 

 food produces a larger flow of milk, but it wears down the cow 

 more than it does to feed a better quality of food. I think 

 there is the great difference. Of course the milk that the cow 

 gives is manufactured out of what she eats ; and if she eats a 

 better quality of food, the milk must be of a better quality. 



Now, with reference to what Mr. Smith said with regard to 

 feeding various things, cabbages in particular. For some eight 

 or ten years I have fed cabbages to my cows in the fall of the 

 year regularly, in moderate quantities, and I have never discov- 

 ered anything, either in the milk or in the butter, (though we 

 have made butter but a small part of the year because we have 

 been engaged in selling milk and making cheese,) which indi- 

 cated the presence of cabbages. If the milk or butter does taste 

 of the cabbage, it must be cither because it is fed to them in too 

 large quantities, or fed to them when they have been in the 

 habit of having other food in large quantities. Fed to them 

 regularly, at the proper time, in moderate quantities, it will 

 increase the flow of milk ; and I have never discovered anything 

 objectionable in smell or taste. 



Mr. BiRNiE. A few years ago I sowed a tobacco bed, and at 

 the same time sowed a cabhage bed. I had very few tobacco 

 plants that were good, but an excellent bed of cabbage plants ; 

 the rains came on, and it seemed to be a very favorable time to 

 set out cabbages, and I set them out every rainy day. The 

 result was, my piece was covered with cabbages and no tobacco. 

 I had some five or six acres of cabbages, and they grew tremen- 

 dously, and gave me the greatest crop of cabbages produced in 

 our neighborhood. They ripened and began to burst before I 

 knew it, and I commenced giving them to my cows, feeling, at 

 the same time, that tliere was some danger of their tasting in 

 the milk. I had that impression because I had some experience 

 when feeding the outside leaves occasionally to my cows ; the 

 milk tasted of the cabbage. But I began to feed them by the 

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