35 



Cow Stables. 



While perchance this presentation of feeding may commend it- 

 self at a season when we realize our needs, the time is past for us 

 to remedy present conditions of feed this summer, and it is still 

 early to lay definite plans for next season. 



The need of preparing winter quarters for dairy stock will soon 

 be felt, and in the course of the next few weeks necessary improve- 

 ments and alterations should be made. We see the necessity of 

 good stable sanitation more clearly than formerly. The past few 

 years have taught Massachusetts dairymen an expensive lesson, 

 and one, therefore, not soon to be forgotten. I do not propose to 

 determine whether the State has dealt wisely or not with its cattle. 

 It may have done both since it has gone from one extreme of cattle 

 inspection to another in a very short time. Those in charge of the 

 cattle interests in Massachusetts have doubtless learned much in 

 the matter. The least that the State can do is to try and teach 

 farmers the needs of the time with regard to maintaining the health 

 of cattle. We often hear of the good health of the cattle in our 

 grandfathers' times. Tuberculosis was not then invented. Ill 

 health among cows was almost unknown, etc. Perhaps the im- 

 munity of that generation is partly in imagination and in the for- 

 getting of many hardships during the years that have intervened. 

 Certain it is, in the human family disease was not then less prev- 

 alent than now. The non-existence of tuberculosis in cattle fifty 

 years ago seems rather improbable, if we can credit the statements 

 of Columella, made nearly two thousand years ago. This old 

 Roman describes a disease among cattle called " ulceration of the 

 lungs," and says " that they die not, you must bore a hole in the 

 left ear and insert a root of the lung wort." 



But granting that bovine tuberculosis is not " a new thing under 

 the sun " there can be little doubt that our generation has seen 

 far greater loss as a result than has formerly been recorded. This 

 is not because of any radical change in the character of the malady, 

 but rather in a change of the conditions in which cattle are kept. 

 That our cattle are subjected to different conditions from those 

 which formerly obtained no candid observer will deny. The forc- 

 ing of dairy stock to abnormal production under high pressure 

 has been productive of serious results. 



Of these conditions, that of feed, which has been charged with 

 so much influence, we will pass over merely observing that within 

 reasonable limits the feed, provided it is wholesome and palatable, 

 does not have so adverse an effect upon the health as is sometimes 

 supposed. True, overcrowding the cow with rich feed does often 



