170 DAIRY HERD MANAGEMENT 



and barn room for twenty or thirty cows and can save hiring a 

 man by having a machine, it will pay to put one in, provided he 

 understands machinery reasonably well and understands cows 

 fully as well as would be required if he were to do all the work 

 by hand and will attend to the work in person. 



Most or all the machines are now made so that all parts can 

 be cleaned. It is another question whether they will be kept 

 clean. If cared for properly cleaner milk can be produced by 

 machine than by hand, but in practice there is dauger that the 

 milk will not be so clean. 



The success or the failure of the machine now depends 

 almost wholly on the operator. 



The bed of the cow naturally should be comfortable whether 

 made so with shavings or straw. It is the nature of cattle to 

 eat their feed rapidly, then to lie down to ruminate it. If a 

 hard, narrow, or otherwise uncomfortable bed is furnished them, 

 the discomfort will induce activity and needlessly increase the 

 amount of feed necessary for maintenance. Making the cows 

 completely comfortable saves feed (Fig. 59). 



Dehorning the cows after maturity gives them less pain than 

 they would inflict upon some sister cow if permitted to wear 

 their useless side arms. Clippers for the removal of horns are 

 not to be advised, since they crush the bone and thereby leave a 

 large number of little slivers which make healing difficult and 

 very slow. A fine meat saw is preferable to any other instru- 

 ment yet devised. The horn should be sawed so close to the 

 head that a ring of hair about a quarter of an inch wide will still 

 cling to the horn. Cut thus short the horn will not grow, neither 

 will it hurt the animal as keenly as it would if cut a half inch 

 longer, in which case the stub would continue growth and often 

 produce an ugly or annoying malf ormed horn. It is inadvisable 

 to dehorn in winter because of the cold, and it is dangerous, 

 indeed, to dehorn in summer when flies are bad. If, in the case 

 of an accident, it becomes necessary to saw off an animal's horn 

 during fly season and maggots should develop in the wound, they 

 may be thoroughly expelled by means of turpentina The 

 wound should then be covered with a wad of cotton saturated 



