THE DAIRY. 



First, the barn, to make the dairy profitable, must be warm 

 and convenient, in order that the cows can be made to produce 

 milk and butter instead of a large portion of their feed bein^ ♦con- 

 sumed for animal heat. Time, with man, represents money ; 

 therefore, all arrangements for feeding, watering and care of the 

 cow should be done with the least labor and quickest despatch. 

 Having arranged the barn and dairy according to the size of 

 the farm and number of cows, the first and most important 

 starting point is, that the cow must be the best ; second, keep- 

 ing and feeding to the best advantage; third, the most profit- 

 abhi way of caring for an \ marketing her product. 



On the choice of your dairy cow depends the whole success 

 of the dairy. You would not now undertake to plow with the 

 old wooden plow your forefathers used, or hoe potatoes with 

 the hoe made by the blacksmith for your fathers, and the most 

 unprofitable tool on the dairy farm is a poor cow. It is not 

 only that she is no profit; that would be bad enough, but far 

 worse than that, she runs you into debt. If a man keeps one 

 cow and she is a poor one he soon finds it out and will get rid 

 of her, but in a herd a cow may look well and even give a fair 

 flow of milk, and yet she may not only fall short of paying 

 her own keep, but be eating up the profit made by her neigh- 

 bor ; so the farm has no profit on the pair, and so on ; hence 

 the importance in the dairy of testing all cows and weeding 

 out, or killing all inferior animals, as the poor cow is not only 

 deteriorating and becoming of less value as years go by, but 

 is transmitting her worthlessness to the direct loss of 

 her owner. The form of a dairy cow is so well known to most 

 of you that it is scarcely worth while mentioning it, but some 

 points are so necessary to a perfect cow that they cannot be 

 too strongly urged, A good cow must be long, level, with 



