DAIRY. 



549 



Dairy. 



Manage- 

 ment of 



The best age for a milk cow is betwixt four or five, and 

 ' ten. When old she will give more milk, but it is of an 

 inferior quality, and she is less easily supported. 



In the management of cows, two things are evident- 

 ly of the greatest consequence, — to keep the animals 

 easy, clean, and well aired; and to supply them with a 

 sufficiency of wholesome nourishing food. It is quite 

 certain, that if they be either over fatigued, immersed 

 in dirt and nastiness, or deprived of the benefit of fresh 

 air and proper food, they cannot enjoy good health ; 

 and as milk is a secretion from the animal system in its 

 healthy state, whatever tends to impair this state must 

 injure the secretion of the milk. When the cows are 

 turned out to pasture, they must not be over-driven, or 

 have so for to. travel as to induce fatigue. In the house 

 they must be carefully cleaned, and have an abundant 

 supply of fresh air. Their food, in winter, may be of 

 two kinds, either dry or green. Of dry food, hay 

 and straw are almost the only kinds used ; but hay 

 is too expensive to be employed as a constant food, 

 and even though it were not, an intermixture of green 

 or soft food, such as turnips, cabbages, potatoes, carrots, 

 cole and malt grains, would essentially contribute to tlve 

 health of the animal ; and the two most usual, and cer- 

 tainly the most profitable kinds of green food that can 

 be used, are cabbage and turnips. Carrots or potatoes 

 given once or twice a day, along with other sorts of 

 green food, will be profitable ; but no dairy cows will 

 pay if fed solely on these. From one to two hundred 

 pounds a day of cabbages or turnips will be consumed 

 by a middle-sized cow ; but 70 to 100 with straw, is 

 supposed to be as much as her produce will pay for. 



In summer, the best food for cows is certainly grass, 

 and that produced by old pastures has been generally 

 thought preferable, and often asserted to afford the rich- 

 est milk. But Dr Anderson has no doubt that this is a 

 popular error, and has often seen finer dairy products 

 afforded by proper management, from cows fed on cut 

 clover and rye-grass, than from such as have been kept on 

 the finest old pastures. This part of the subject is more 

 fully discussed under our article Buttku. 



Sufficient shelter from the heat of the day, and from 

 the insects in summer, and from excessive cold or wet 

 in winter, should of course be well attended to. Close 

 confinement to the house, is by no means so prejudicial 

 to the health of cows as has been often imagined. They 

 are found to thrive equally well on stall-feeding as in 

 the fields ; but then it is essentially necessary to keep 

 them very clean, and to comb and dress them ; for if 

 this be neglected, their legs will swell, and their health 

 suffer. 



Mr Curwen of Workington was the first who de- 

 monstrated, by actual extensive experiment, the utility 

 of stall-feeding dairy cows. He combined steamed chaff 

 and oil cake, with different sorts of green food, and 

 found that, by giving a middle-sized cow two stones of 

 green food and two of boiled chaff, with two pounds of 

 ground oil cake and eight pounds of straw, the daily ex- 

 pence of her keep was only 5^d. The oil cake hefound to 

 be much more productive of milk when given with 

 steamed chaff, than when employed without it. Vary- 

 ing their food from time to tune, is found to be of much 

 advantage to cows, and this may probably arise from 

 the additional relish with which the animal eats, or from 

 the superior excitement of a new stimulus on the differ- 

 ent secretions. 



The cows for a few weeks before calving, should 

 have every night a little hay, or a somewhat greater al- 

 lowance of green food ; and on the day of calving, they 

 should be kept in, and have warm water. For a fort- 



night after calving, they should have with their green Dairy. 

 food a little hay or chopped straw, with some ground N— *"Y""" 

 or crushed oats. 



The land necessary to maintain a cow may, we be- 

 lieve, at an average, be stated from two to three Eng- 

 lish acres, if we take into account the com, hay, straw, 

 and every thing else which the animal consumes. No 

 one dairy maid can manage with propriety more than a 

 dozen or fifteen cows. 



Dairy farming in Scotland was till lately very much 

 neglected ; but there are now in that country some es- 

 tablishments of this sort on a very large scale. The 

 county of Ayr was the first to set the example. But 

 Sir John Sinclair, in his late Account of the Scotch Sys- 

 tems of Husbandry, states, that the dairy farms of Mr 

 James Ralston, in Fineview, on the shore of Lochryan 

 in Wigtonshire, are at present the largest concern of 

 the kind in Scotland. He kept some time ago 120 

 milch cows, and is making arrangements for adding 

 about 100 more to the number. 



" They are divided," says Mr Smith, in his Survey 

 of Galloway, " into lots of ten or twelve to each byre or 

 cow-house, and a dairy- maid is appointed to every fif- 

 teen cows. She is allowed an assistant at milking, pro • 

 cured from a neighbouring village, at Is. per week. 

 To stimulate exertion, Mr Ralston gives a premium 

 of two guineas to the dairy-maid who has most distin- 

 guished herself for management ; and, to enable him 

 to make a fair estimate of their comparative merits, they 

 are appointed daily, in regular succession, to different 

 lots of cows." 



The cows are never fed out of doors till the grass 

 has risen, to afford them a full bite. In dry and hot 

 weather, they are housed, and fed on cut grass from 

 six in the morning till six at night ; when they are 

 turned out to pasture for the other twelve hours. Du- 

 ring bad weather, they are housed both night and. day, 

 and fed plentifully with turnips, potatoes, or other 

 green food. Chaff, oats, and potatoes, are boiled for 

 them after calving ; and they are generally fed on rye- 

 grass-hay during the latter part of the spring. 



Mr Ralston says, that, about three years ago, every 

 cow on his farm yielded annually her own weight of 

 Dunlop cheese, which then sold at 14s. or 15s. per 

 stone ; and that he would not keep a cow that did not, 

 in the course of the year, produce her own weight of 

 cheese, and that would sell for the price of the cow. 

 Sir John Sinclair states the net profit of a milk cow, in 

 the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, at £9,3 per annum. 

 Where the breeding system is followed, the profits of 

 the dairy, in butter, cheese, and milk, are allowed to 

 be very inconsiderable, and cannot, on an average, be 

 estimated at more than about two guineas per cow an- 

 nually, when the calves are reared. But, including 

 the value of the calves themselves, when sold at the age 

 of one year, the net profit of «ach cow may be stated 

 at from L.8 to L.10. 



The two grand dairy products are butter and cheese. 

 Of the former we have given an account in another part 

 of this work, under its proper title ; and we now go 

 on to observe, that 



Cheese is a well-known article of food, prepared from CTieete-. 

 milk, usually that of the cow. When allowed to stand 

 till spontaneous acidity takes place, or when certain 

 substances are added to milk, it coagulates and sepa- 

 rates into two parts, a solid arid a fluid. The solid is 

 named curd, the fluid whey. When the curd is taken 

 out of the whey, subjected to pressure, and afterwards. 

 dried for use, it constitutes cheese. 



The coagulation of milk is effected by various sab-- 



