497 
RESULTS OF EXPERIMENTS ON THE SPAYING 
OF COWS. 
By M. Levrat, Veterinary Surgeon, Lausanne, Stvitzerland, 
[In The ETERINARiAM of 1835, two very valuable papers on 
this subject, communicated by this gentleman, were introduced. 
We fear that they did not make a due impression. To enable 
. a cow, for an indefinite period, and, probably, until old age, to 
yield her greatest quantity of milk, must be of immense ad¬ 
vantage to the dairyman. A more important discovery could- 
scarcely be made than the perpetuation of the milking powers 
of the cow. After three additional years’ experience, M. 
Levrat resumes the subject. He commences by giving a fair 
and h onourable account of the introduction of this operation. 
The castration of the cow, like that of many other of our 
female domesticated animals, is of very ancient date. Most 
authors that have written on the castration of domesticated 
animals have said that it was practised on mares, cows, sheep, 
and swine, in order to increase their disposition to accumulate 
fat; but it is astonishing that not one of them has described 
this effect of the operation on the cow.—Y.] 
M. Winn, a land-proprietor at Natchez, in Louisiana, in 
America, was the first person who practised this operation with 
the view of preserving for a longer time in the cow the quantity 
of milk which she yielded during the month after parturition. 
The following is the report of his early experiments taken from 
Le Journal des Connaissances utileSy Fev., 1833. 
“M. Winn was induced, by a course of experiments which lie 
had instituted, to perform the operation of spaying on a cow a 
little while after she had calved, and at the time when she yielded 
most milk. She continued to yield milk for many years after 
this without interruption, and without any diminution beyond 
that which would aiise from change of food. The operation was 
performed a month after she had produced her third calf. It 
was far from being a very painful one, and the fever which followed 
was neither considerable nor of long continuance. The wound 
was healed in a few days, and she soon began to give as much 
milk as before. She died in consequence of an accident some 
years afterwards. 
** He then spayed a second cow, and with the same success; 
but she also perished, being staked in leaping over a fence. 
** Being, however, fully assured of the advantages to be derived 
V o L. X 1 . 3 u 
