The Cow 323 



Milk-giving is a habit, founded upon 

 nature and predisposition. A young cow of 

 the finest milking strain, will soon give only 

 what her calf can suck, if the calf is per- 

 mitted to do the milking. White Oaks 

 cows were milked regularly, and stripped 

 very clean from the day they came in, but 

 until the calves were a month old, the pigs 

 got the qiilk. The calves, of course were 

 allowed to suck, and suck — the trouble was 

 their small bodies could not hold four gallons. 

 Though they were suckled three times a 

 day if the cows came home at noon, they 

 always set up a great bawling and bleat- 

 ing at night and ran with lifted tails down 

 the fence, the minute they heard the first 

 faint low of their homing dams. These of 

 course were calves of the milk cows. Joe 

 pitied the little creatures, though he knew 

 they were always well fed, and wondered if 

 they did not envy the other calves, those meant 

 for beef, which ran with their mothers, and 

 took nips of warm milk about every half hour. 



They were fine fellows, all dark red roans 

 like their short-horn sire, but Joe did not 

 care for them as he did for the scrub calves. 

 Scrub stock is a colloquialism for ordinary 

 native blood. White Oaks scrub stock was 

 not the least scrubby, although it lacked uni- 

 formity — had red coats, or black, or white. 



