FOOD OF THE COW. 27 



especially the large Belgian sorts, can be grown with great 

 advantage on a dairy farm ; 10 to 12 tons are a good 

 ordinary crop. They do not give a disagreeable taste to the 

 milk, and are extremely palatable to the cattle. Half a 

 cwt. a day might be given along with other food. (16.) 

 Parsnips, while not so palatable as carrots, and more 

 proper to be given in a steamed or boiled mess, along with 

 other food, are even more nutritive, and enrich the milk. 

 Of the large Jersey parsnips, 10 or 12 tons per acre have 

 been grown. (17.) Potatoes when steamed, if at hand in 

 sufficient quantity for such a use, are excellent cow food ; 

 and even raw they are sometimes used, but with less 

 advantage. (18.) Straw of our various corn and pulse 

 crops is used as winter fodder in the cow-yard. Cooked 

 bean straw, if the crop has been well harvested and cut 

 before it was dead ripe, is nutritious fodder. Pea- straw, 

 if free from mildew, is also good food; and clean wheat 

 and oat and barley straw is often almost the sole fodder of 

 dry cows and young stock through the winter, with a very 

 few turnips. If a portion of the straw be cut to chaff, and 

 wetted with a hot and salt sort of linseed soup, made at the 

 rate of about J a Ib. of the linseed to each of the cattle, 

 store stock can thus be kept in very good condition through 

 the winter. (19.) Meal of the various grains wheat, 

 barley, oats, beans, peas also of linseed and Indian corn, 

 is used more or less in cases where rich feeding of dairy 

 cows is adopted. Bean, barley, and India-meal are probably 

 more commonly used than any other, and the first seems 

 especially fitted as food for cows in milk ; a pound or two 

 sprinkled in the course of the day over the ration, cooked 

 or otherwise, as the cow receives it, is generally well repaid. 

 The relative uses of barley meal and malted barley have 



