226 WINTER FEEDING OF DAIRY COWS 



Comfort of body, present in the early summer to the greatest 

 degree, is essential to liberal production. In order that the 

 cow under artificial circumstances shall be as productive as her 

 inherited nature will permit, complete comfort, both in tem- 

 perature of stable and in sleeping quarters, is necessarily re- 

 quired for winter. 



Very comfortable stables are now in use and becoming more 

 common. The temperature of summer may be closely duplicated 

 in winter. 





D E H 



Fig. 74. — Illustrating the economy of liberal feeding. 



Abundance of Feed. — Even with the heavy stocking of 

 pastures practiced in many parts of the country there is usually 

 a great abundance of feed for the cows for a few weeks and it 

 is observed that during this period of abundance the cows yield 

 milk most liberally and we find that logic, experience and scien- 

 tific findings all agree that any animal, to produce freely, 

 must be freely fed. The value of mere abundance of feed may 

 be well illustrated in the diagram (Fig. 7-i) in which let the 

 upper bar indicated by the length of the line A C be the amount 

 of feed given to cow ISTo. 1, and the lower line D H, the amount 

 of feed given to cow No. 2, of equal weight and form. These 

 two cows, for the maintenance of their bodies, will consume or 

 burn daily a quantity of feed represented by the distances A B 

 and D E, respectively- The maintenance amount of feed is a 

 fairly constant quantity. 



It is evident that cow No. 1 will have a balance of feed over 

 and above the amount for maintenance represented by the short 

 line B C, whereas Cow No. 2 receives the amount of surplus 

 feed presented by the line E H, the same being three times as 



