ON MILCH COWS. 35 



town of Haverhill, and found the produce to be seventy-eight 

 bushels twenty -six quarts of very heavy oats. 



RuFUs Slocomb. 



11. ON MILCH COWS. 



The Committtee of the Essex Agricultural Society on Milch 

 Cows and Heifers, report, that three cows and one heifer were 

 offered for premium, and one heifer for exhibition only. 



The Committee believe that the unfavorableness of the season 

 for grazing has caused this part of the exhibition to be less inter- 

 esting than it otherwise would have been. TJiis county has af- 

 forded, and we think is now able to exhibit, specimens of this 

 kind of stock not surpassed by any in the state. 



The severity of drought, which we have so generally experi- 

 enced, has induced farmers to exercise their ingenuity to discover 

 some substitute for pasture feed ; and the Committee had hopes 

 that the statements of the competitors for the Society's premi- 

 ums would have suggested to them some approved crop which 

 might be employed to remedy an evil of so frequent an occur- 

 rence. But the statements were, in this particular, as dry and 

 meagre as the pastures. 



With several prudent farmers within our knowledge, it has 

 been a practice to provide a seasonable supply of green fodder 

 by raising Indian corn planted thick in drills ; and many others, 

 less provident have topped their corn early and given the stalks 

 green to their hungry cows. To cut the stalks before the corn 

 hardens is considered injurious to the crop, but when they can- 

 be separated without damage to the corn, there is perhaps, no 

 way of disposing of them more profitably than to give them to 

 cows in milk, especially when there is a scarcity of feed in the 

 pastures. It has however, been questioned whether this kind of 

 fodder does actually increase and improve the milk. With cows 

 which have fed to satiety on good natural feed, the effect will not 

 be so readily perceived, but ahberal supply of corn fodder will 



