AND RURAL ECONOMIST. ^ 



during the winter in the usual manner ; and the milk will 

 be richer and of better quality. 



The carrots or other roots, at nineteen cents a bushel, 

 amount to about eighteen dollars; the addition of milk, 

 allowing it to be only three quarts a day for three hundred 

 days, at three cents a quart, twenty-seven dollars. It should 

 be remembered, too, that when cows are thus fed with roots 

 they consume less hay, and are less liable to several diseases, 

 which are usually the effects of poor keeping."^ 



The keeping of cows is very profitable. Allowing one to 

 give only six quarts a day, for forty weeks in each year, and 

 this is not a large allowance, her milk at two cents per quart 

 will amount to upwards of thirty-three dollars ; which is 

 probably sufficient to purchase her and pay for a year's 

 keeping.^ 



' A farmer some years since kept eighteen cows on a com- 

 mon, and was often obliged to buy butter for his family. 

 The common was inclosed, and the same person supplied his 

 family amply with milk and butter from the produce of four 

 cows well kept. 



' Great milkers seldom carry much flesh on their bones, 

 but they pay as they go and never retire in our debt. The 

 difficulties in cow keeping are these : the expense of their 

 food is considerable, more especially with respect to any 

 which must be purchased, and if the produce be inconsidera- 

 ble it may be a losing concern. You may be feeding a. 

 sparing milker into flesh, and if you stint her or allow her 

 only ordinary food you get neither flesh nor milk.'t 



Amateurs in this line should procure the largest milkers, 

 and I had almost said give them gold, could they eat it. In 

 this case it may be depended on, 'milk is always of more value 

 than the best cow-food ; and a cow, the natural tendency of 

 which is to breed milk, will convert all nourishment, however 

 dry and substantial, into that fluid; in fact will require such 

 solid kind of nourishment to support her strength and induce 

 her to take the bull.t 



Keep no more cows than you can keep well ; one cow well 

 fed will produce as much milk as two indifferently treated, 

 and more butter ; and if the cow be Avintered badly, she will 

 rarely recover, during the succeeding summer, so as to be- 

 come profitable to the feeder. Cows should by all means be 

 housed in extreme weather, and particularly those which 



* Farmer's Assistant. f Mowbray on Poultry, &c. 



