CATTLE HUSBANDRY. 37 



be good, and, if not naturally so, should be improved by ploughing 

 and re-seeding, or top-dressing, or in some way cleaned and fer- 

 tilized. Cows should be enabled to fill themselves without wan- 

 dering long distances, for quietness produces not only digestion, 

 but secretion of fat, and increases the richness of the milk. In 

 many places it will pay to stable the animals most of the day 

 during summer, especially during the hottest part, and soil them 

 from the rich meadows near the barn, from which several crops 

 can be taken in one season,' by high manuring, — top-dressing. 

 But cows in confinement need more change of food than when 

 at pasture, and even at pasture observant dairymen often detect 

 a falling off of the casein or curd adapted to cheese making, and 

 a larger production of fatty matter yielding butter, or vice versa. 

 Sometimes a change of pasture will remedy the difficulty, or it 

 may be necessary to supplement the feed of grass with artificial 

 food, or even hay, the latter decreasing the curd and increasing 

 the butter, whilst potatoes, beets, or oil-cake will increase the 

 cheese-making constituents. The superior influence of our 

 natural pastures is owing to the variety of grasses and other 

 plants contained in them, and it is therefore desirable, when they 

 need improvement, to do it by sowing artificial fertilizers on the 

 top, — plaster, bone-dust and the like, — instead of taking them 

 up and re-seeding to one kind of grass only. 



