84 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



spring, and then sold for beef. They went on very well, and 

 looked well when spring came. They answered for cheap beef 

 well enough. One I thought I would keep. She had given 

 seventeen quarts a day on this feed. She was a great strong 

 Vermont native cow. I turned her into the pasture in the lat- 

 ter part of June when she went dry. She did not improve at 

 all. She looked sorry, disheartened. She looked as if the 

 grass did not agree with her. I put her into another pasture, 

 and that did not seem to do her any good. Then I undertook 

 to soil her, but to no purpose. She came in again in the fall, 

 but instead of giving seventeen quarts a day, she gave seven, 

 and it was evident that her whole constitution had been de- 

 stroyed by a single season of feeding on cotton-seed meal. That 

 has proved to my mind that I was right when I inferred that I 

 lost twenty-five or thirty cows when I fed cotton-seed meal ; and 

 I laid down this rule — that the nearer you can get to pasture 

 grass for feeding dairy cows, the better. Good water, good 

 light, early-cut hay, roots and shorts, are sufficient for any cow. 

 It is the cheapest food you can get. I do not wonder that the 

 State of Massachusetts, feeding corn-meal to her cows, does not 

 increase their number. There is no reason why farmers should 

 increase them, if they have either got to raise corn on these 

 hills or buy it in the market. I do not wonder that the dairy 

 business of the State of Massachusetts does not increase, when 

 so many men will not learn that the feeding of corn-meal to 

 dry cows or dairy cows is an unprofitable business, and that 

 cotton-seed is destructive. 



Now I desire to say one or two words with regard to the 

 feeding of cows in the autumn, between the time of pasture- 

 grass and winter. Everybody knows that is a difficult spot to 

 get over. The best farmers know it — the best feeders know it. 

 From the middle of September until the middle of November, 

 how are you going to feed your cows ? It is a difficult thing to 

 do. Your pastures are dry. You cannot profitably begin to 

 feed hay in the middle of September. What are you going to 

 do between the middle of September and the middle of Novem- 

 ber ? You cannot raise green crops in those two months with 

 any profit. Suppose you have a lot of beef cattle that you have 

 not turned yet. You must carry them through those two 

 months, and how are you going to do it ? Will you feed them 



