- FEEDTN'G RATIOI^S. 163 



of the coarser fodder, and for winter feeding a supply of 

 mangels or sugar beets will be indispensable for the most 

 profit. In a similar way the use of malt sprouts steeped 

 in water — which makes a sweet semi-liquid pulp of an 

 agreeable odor and taste — mixed with cut straw and corn 

 fodder, has been found to keep up the yield of milk, and, 

 with a slight increase in the mixed meal or ground gram 

 food, to prevent any deficiency in the yield of butter. 

 Well-cured corn fodder, or the stalks of the corn crop, 

 cut before frost, or as soon as the grain has been glazed, 

 and stacked so as to preserve the greenness and sweetness 

 of the leaves, has yielded, with the addition of a peck of 

 sliced roots, as much and as good butter as that made 

 from the best clover hay. 



The effect of certain foods rich in nitrogenous ele- 

 ments, which has been referred to, renders such foods 

 injurious at times to cows soon to calve. The author's 

 practice has been to wholly suspend feeding grain food 

 of any kind to cows as soon as the milking ceases, and 

 to feed only roots with hay or corn fodder or straw, or 

 a mixture of all, as the case may be, in the winter, and 

 only grass or green fodder in the summer. Grain food, 

 too, should not be given until the milk has acquired its 

 iiormal character, the fourth day after calving, and is 

 then given only in small rations at first and increased 

 gradually during a week or ten days, until the full milk 

 yield is reached. Feeding for manure as well as milk 

 yield is a subject of much interest in the dairy. Large 

 crops enable the dairyman to keep a large herd, and large 

 crops are grown only upon rich land. A large herd 

 makes a large quantity of manure, and it will pay a 

 dairyman to expend money, borrowed even for the pur- 

 pose, in the purchase of cows and their food, that he 

 may produce manure to improve his land, repaying the 

 cost of the food through the milk and butter made. 



Having practically experienced this fact, during a few 



