78 



THE AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 



The Advantages of Spaying Cull Dairy Cows, and 



how to do it. 



THE dairy expert of the '•Australasian 

 Pastoralists' Keview " writes : — On 

 going round our dairy farms it may 

 often be found that a lot of cows are 

 kept, which not only do not pay for their 

 own keep, but also eat up some of the 

 profits which their mates give. What 

 to do with these cows is a problem al- 

 ways preplexing the mind of the dairy- 

 man. When a cow comes in with only 

 three teats, or another turns out to give 

 only a very small quantity of milk, or to 

 have some" other fault, his first thought 

 is to get rid of these. On further con- 

 sideration he reflects that they will not 

 be of any more use to anybody else than 

 they are to himself, and he would not be 

 able to sell them for anything like the 

 amount of money they stand him in. He 

 then thinks the' best thing to -do under 

 the circumstances would be to fatten 

 them. But then the bulls have been 

 running with the herd, and even if they 

 are not in calf already, they soon will be, 

 as on very few farnis is it possible to 

 keep a few cows specially apart from all 

 the others and the bulls. By the time 

 they are fat the calf is pretty well 

 matured, and they are of no use to the 

 butcher. In very many cases the dairy- 

 man decides to sell these faulty cows as 

 springers, puts them into auction sales, 

 and says nothing about their faults. 

 Sometimes even careful buyers are taken 

 in with these cows, and when they again 

 come into milk with their faults the same 

 process goes on the following year. 



The consequence is there are always a 

 lot of cows which are next to useless as 

 far as dairying is concerned, in our herds, 

 to get clear of which there are only two 

 ways open to the owner. He cannot 

 milk them to advaniage, nor when they 

 are in calf can lie get rid of tliem to tbe 

 butcher. So he must either accept a 

 price for them far below what lie 

 originally paid, or else he must take 

 somebody else in with them. Apart from 

 the fact that the latter alternative is un- 

 l>ritish, and an undesiral)le system, the 



dairying community, as a whole, is in no 

 better position. The faulty cows are 

 still a drag on someone, and there is 

 every probability of their continuing so 

 under this system. 



Now the natural entl for a cow which 

 does not milk up to the standard which 

 her owner considers payable is to be 

 killed for beef, unless, of course, she has 

 some specially good blood in her veins, 

 and her owner wants to rear calves from 

 her. It is impossible to prepare her for 

 the butcher if she is to be allowed to get 

 in calf ; and, as the way our dairy farms 

 are Avorked it is not convenient to keep 

 a few cows separate from the bull, the 

 (uly way to eliminate these cows from 

 our herds is by spaying them. The risk 

 fiom si)aYing is consiik'red l)y experts to 

 be very slight, and has been proved by 

 them to entail a loss of not more than 

 i per cent. Spayed cows fatten readily, 

 iind their beff is 'eiiual in (pality to that 

 ot the steers. The best time to spay a 

 cow is about six weeks after she has 

 calved, and if she as managed to get in 

 calf again before she is spayed it is al- 

 most a certainty, though not absolutely 

 so, that the o])eration of spaying will 

 cause her to abort. She will be quite 

 herself again in a week or ten days after 

 the operation, and with good feed will 

 start to fatten right away. She is, when 

 spayed, no more trouble than a steer, 

 and as with steers, if her owner finds it 

 necessary, althongh fat, to hold her over 

 for a few months to await a good market, 

 he can do so without fear ot her getting 

 in calf, and becoming unmarketable. 



The universal adoption by dairymen 

 of a system of spaying all cows which 

 they know are not worth milking would 

 prove a boon, not only to the indivi- 

 duals, l)y rendering their useless cows 

 marketai)le, but also to the dairying com- 

 munity as a whole. If the so-called dairy 

 cows, which are not really fit for the 

 dairy, are prevented from breeding, it 

 would seem that the only heifers reared 

 would be those bred from tlio cows which 



