446 THE MANAGEMENT AND FEEDING OF CATTLE 



cattle from the stalk fields. This disease will entirely 

 disappear when the time comes, as it will come, that 

 cornstalks will no longer be thus grazed. They will be 

 harvested and fed either in the form of silage or as dry 

 fodder. When grazed in the field, much of the food 

 value is lost, a loss which this country cannot afford to 

 allow to continue indefinitely, however justifiable the 

 grazing of the stalks may have been in the past. 



Meanwhile something can be done to lessen the 

 hazard from such grazing. Among the measures that 

 have been found of more or less benefit are the follow- 

 ing: (1) Feed corn fodder for a week or longer before 

 turning into a stalk field to avoid sudden change in the 

 diet. (2) Feed them and water them well before turn- 

 ing them in to graze, and then leave them there or ac- 

 custom them gradually to the food by grazing them on 

 the stalks, say, half an hour the first day and increasing 

 the time from day to day. (3) Give them access to 

 succulent or laxative food while thus being grazed, as 

 alfalfa, millet, or ensilage, and encourage them to take 

 salt that they may drink freely. 



Removing the afterbirth from cowrs. — The cow 

 among the domestic animals of the farm is the only one 

 which does not expel the afterbirth or placenta with the 

 progeny when it is born. This is owing in part to the 

 firmness of the attachment of the fetal membranes to 

 the walls of the womb. The retention should not con- 

 tinue longer than the third da}^ or results more or less 

 harmful may follow. 



Among the causes of retained afterbirth are the fol- 

 lowing: (i) Debilit_y in the animal preceding and ac- 

 companying parturition; (2) premature birth, in which 

 instances preparation has not been made by fatty de- 

 generation for the severance of the attachments; (3) 

 musty, moldy, smutty, or ergoted fodders fed to the 

 extent of producing abortion ; (4) the too rapid closing 

 of the neck of the womb after calving, which may result 



