232 
SPAYING OR CASTRATION OF COWS. 
for the purpose of milking. Two methods are pursued by 
them : the first consists in keeping the cows for several years, 
and producing fat calves every eleven or twelve months ; the 
second, in keeping the cows for their milk solely, without ever 
desiring any reproduction. The former custom of keeping- 
cows to breed every year, is now for the most part abandoned, 
in consequence of the inconvenience it puts them to, and of 
the losses sustained by it : the cow remaining, perhaps, many 
months dry, or giving but little milk during the latter months 
of gestation. Such fluctuation in the supply of milk, such 
short-coming in the annual income, added to the necessity of 
keeping a third or a half more number of cows in order to 
meet the demand for milk — privations like these felt by the 
small farmer and vineyard-keeper having but one or two 
cows, occasion their being months in the year without milk, 
or butter or cheese either. 
A small dairy such as this, notwithstanding it has but a 
few cows, is forced to keep a bull, which yields no other profit 
save its dung, and is sold at a loss when wanted to be got rid 
of. When one has no bull of one’s own, there may be none 
within reach, or within a long way off ; and during the bulling 
season it may be impossible to get the cows to him, on ac- 
count of the weather, or that one has nobody at hand to 
take them. In this predicament, the bulling may pass off. 
The cow may fail to conceive, although experiencing, more 
than ever, desire for copulation. Moreover, cows which are 
bulling who have not been in the habit of going out, become 
intractable: often they break their halters, make their escape, 
and come to harm, or injure or even kill persons. The pro- 
prietor of the bull, not being forewarned, it may happen that 
after two or three leaps the animal fails in the act, the effect 
of which is rather to excite sexual desire than to calm it, 
such as happens when he is a bad calf getter. Or the bull 
may prove too large for the cow, or beget a calf too large for 
parturition. Or the bull may be unwell. Or, as happens not 
unfrequently, the journey to the bull is postponed from day to 
day, until the cow loses all desire ; or this may be done pur- 
posely to prolong her duration of yielding milk. 
Rich food, and plenty of it, which is given to the cow to 
force her milk, is apt to engender disease, besides creating in 
her a desire for copulation. And as an inflamed surface refuses 
generally to absorb the substances applied to it, sur-excitation 
of the vagina, uterus, Fallopian tubes, and ovaries, will, in like 
manner, be liable to continue to the failure of impregnation 
taking place, from lack of absorption of the fecundating fluid. 
Should the cow become with calf, then has the animal to 
