254 THE COMPLETE GRAZIER. BOOK lu 



increase the digestibility by softening the fibre ; the same end may be 

 attained much more easily and cheaply by simply moistening the forage 

 well with water, and leaving it a day to soften. 



In some parts of Flanders, after the corn crops have been reaped, 

 the ground is lightly ploughed and sown with spurrey. The cows are 

 tethered on it in October, and a space allowed to each proportioned to 

 the crop and the size and appetite of the animal. The butter from the 

 milk thus obtained is called spergule butter. It is not of equal quality 

 with that produced from the common food. 1 



In the midland and northern counties, milch cows are allowed the 

 best pastures during summer, followed in the autumn by eddish, 

 and various green crops, of which cabbage is regarded as one of the most 

 important ; and are housed for the nights when the weather becomes 

 cold or wet, one or both, when they receive the first instalments of 

 winter food, which in former days was hay, or turnips and straw where 

 both were cultivated : but a difference was made between those which 

 were rather fresh of milk, and those which were nearly dry, the former 

 having a larger portion of turnips, with the addition of h&y, while the 

 latter were put off with little else than chopped straw until within a 

 few weeks of calving, when hay was allowed. In Essex, the system 

 was nearly the same, except that, the produce of the dairy being chiefly 

 butter, turnips were seldom given. Rowen (or aftermath) hay, as 

 being the softest and greenest, was preferred, and the consumption was 

 calculated at two loads (of eighteen cwt.) in the winter, with two acres 

 of summer pasture, and some straw, while drying off. 



In the neighbourhood of London, distillers' grains and wash are 

 extensively given to milch cows, and with advantage as regards the 

 quantity of the milk; these articles do not, however, improve the quality. 

 Grains are very liable to fermentation, and fermenting food is injurious 

 to cows. 



The vast extension of the country milk-trade has done away with 

 most of the metropolitan cow-sheds, and has changed the character of 

 dairy farming in districts from which milk is sent to London and other 

 large centres. There can be no doubt that the milk-trade has been 

 on the whole more profitable than cheese- or butter-making since 1878 ; 

 indeed, it may be regarded as being and having been the mainstay of 

 the dairying industry of England. It has led to a vast consumption of 

 purchased feeding-stuffs, and therefore to more generous and liberal 

 rations for cattle, as well as to more elastic and adaptable systems of 

 cropping arable land. Later on we shall have more to say on the 

 subject of the country milk-trade. 



In the course of the preceding statements, the stall- or house-feeding, 

 of cows during the winter in Holland has been mentioned ; and from 

 the remarks of Baron d' Alton, it appears that this method of feeding 

 is there adopted throughout the year with greater profit than can be 

 obtained from pasturing. The Baron, certainly, says that cows must 

 be early trained to the confinement of stall-feeding, otherwise they do 



1 Sir John Sinclair's " Hints on the Agriculture of the Netherlands, &c." 



