Toion Milk. 
81 
The letter 1'' intimates tli.'it tlu; meal or cake ^vas ji^Iven only to 
fattinu: cows. It will be seen that in only one house was distillery 
wash given ; and I believe that though productive of a great 
([uantity of poor milk, it is not by any means a common article 
of food in London dairies. Its reputation as a washy food may, 
however, have hindered my being told of its use. There is 
nothing, I believe, that more excites the milk secretion, and when 
given fresh along with other substantial food, no objection can be 
made to its use.* 
In only one other particular does town dairying differ from that 
of country farms. No attempt is made to breed from the cow. 
It is very rarely indeed that a bull is kept, or that the cow re- 
ceives one in a London cowhouse. She is kept till the quantity 
of her milk no longer pays, and she is then sold. In the country, 
on the other hand, it is of course generally the policy of the 
farmer to keep on his better cows for several seasons, and to 
breed from them. But the management in that case in no respect 
difTers from that of ordinary dairy-farms, which is not my subject ; 
and even as regards suburban dairies this perhaps more properly 
comes under the third section of my subject — the general treat- 
ment of the cow. 
Treatment of the Cow. 
In so far as the feeding of the cow belongs to this part of the 
general subject of town dairies — and of course it is the most 
important part of it — the only remark that need be made after 
what has been already said is that the food must be always good 
of its kind, and regularly and punctually given. Faulty food 
soon shows itself in the quality of the milk ; and irregularity in 
feeding or any other disturbance of so sensitive a creature as a 
milch-cow is sure to be followed by a diminished yield of milk. 
Swedes and common turnips taint the milk ; and if given at all 
should be used either in small quantity with other food, or, what 
is better, cooked in a hot mash.f I have given cabbages for 
months together to vipwards of 100 cows without any particular 
care being taken to keep spoiled or rotten leaves out of the 
manger, but I have never found the milk tainted by them. To 
steam food which has any aroma belonging to it communicable 
to the milk is of course, as already said, the best way to make it 
* It is, however, objected to the use of distillery wash, and in a less degree to 
that of grains, that the milk derived from their use as a food needs to be con- 
sumed at once, as it will " turn " more rapidly than the milk of grass-fed cows. I 
know of no direct experiment on this point, and can only refer to the impression 
which some milk dealers have that this is so. 
t Here, too, attempts are made, by using saltpetre in the water with which the 
cans are washed, and by putting a little in with the milk itself when they are 
filled, to get rid of any taint which it may possess. 
VOL. IV. — S. S. G 
