82 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



tion of milk. You will make the bone too large, the carcase 

 too round. You will contract the abdomen of the cow, in 

 which all tliose organs are laid that go to fill its udder with 

 milk. You will make her too delicate, too dependent upon 

 nice food ; and, more than all that, you may create in the calf 

 a tendency to inflammation of the glands connected with this 

 intricate and delicate system which you have heard described. 

 I have no doubt that the seeds of garget and inflammation of 

 the udder are sown for the cow during her period of calfhood. 

 So I would take the heifer calf from the cow early ; bring it up 

 by hand ; put it into the shape of a little cow as early as possi- 

 ble ; do not let it look pinched at all, but keep it thriving. 

 Feed it on grass cut for the purpose ; give it turnips and oat- 

 meal. The best thing in the world to make bone is Swedish 

 turnips. Get your calf, I repeat, into the shape of a miniature 

 cow as early as possible, and keep it along in that line, and you 

 are developing the qualities that will make a cow when it shall 

 have arrived at its full growth. There is no danger of its hav- 

 ing derived, from feeding, those diseases of .the udder that will 

 make it utterly useless, nor any danger that it has developed 

 any other animal organ except those which you want for your 

 purpose when you get your cow. 



When the calf is grown, what then ? Why, the same rule of 

 feeding adopted when it was a calf, adopt when it is a cow. 

 I have heard a great many say, " You can feed cows on corn- 

 meal and cotton-seed meal and oil-cake with impunity ; feed 

 them heavily ; it won't hurt them ; they can stand it." It is an 

 entire mistake. The dairy cow is a delicate animal. You 

 must remember that a good cow matures slowly. It is not at 

 two years old, nor three years old, nor four years old, that a 

 good cow comes to perfection, any more than it is at three or 

 four years old that a good horse comes to perfection. The de- 

 velopment of a dairy cow and a horse are identical. It is a slow 

 process, and you must keep your cow gradually growing up to 

 that point where she arrives at her perfection ; and, in order to 

 do that, you must feed her as I have suggested in regard to the 

 calf. 



I always insist upon it, that the natural food of cows, in the 

 first place, is grass. You may talk about soiling cows. They 

 will get along on grass and grain and clover and green fodder, 



