455 
American Agriculturist, May 10, 1924 
Dairymen Are Like Other Men... 
In Spite of Having to Fight Mean Cows and Bovine Tuberculosis 
F OR some time past I have been reading the arti¬ 
cles in the American Agriculturalist apper 
taining to and touching on “mean cows,” their 
uses and abuses. I am fifty years old, and my 
life has been mostly spent with the cows. This last 
winter I have been chambermaid and dining-room 
girl for some fifty-odd head, but I will leave it to the 
editor to decide whether or not this qualifies me to 
enter the contest of yarn-spinners. 
There seems to be a widespread notion among a great 
many w r riters that the average dairyman is a cruel. 
Simon Legree sort of chap who stamps up and down 
with a click, seeking whom he may devour. Now this 
sort of stuff might be classed as piff, piffle, and also 
bunk. Dairymen are like other men, only more so. 
I am a strong advocate of the gentle-Annie stuff up to 
and including a certain point. This point might be 
designated by whatever the nervous system of the 
milker ■will stand, and it might be classed 
as a movable planet, like the price of auto¬ 
mobiles, subject to change without notice. 
I have seen a fellow’ feeding a half dozen of 
young calves without saying a word but 
what might be written in the minutes of 
a Sunday School Convention, suddenly 
hit the ceiling with a dull, sickening thud, 
because some innocent young calf (wdth 
reservations on the innocent) slopped milk 
on his clean overhalls. 
I have found that there are more cows 
spoiled by afraid milkers than there are 
by afraid cows. This is the way I solved 
the problem. If there is a cow that I’m 
afraid of, I let on I have a sore finger and 
ask my wife to milk her until I get used to 
her. It saves my self-respect. 
In my experience, a genuine mean cow 
is a very rare thing, and like poets, artists, 
and other freaks of nature, is born that 
way; and a mean cow, like a mean man, 
gets worse the longer she gets away with it. 
By a mean cow I don’t include a few that 
are temperamental, a few free-thinkers, or 
even a modernist or two. These are in all 
dairies. But for the genuine, blown-in- 
the-bottle, foot-in-the-milk-pail, I have no 
sympathy, nor half that much for a man 
who will keep one on his farm.—A. J, 
Kelly, St, Lawrence, N, Y. 
* * * 
Health and Prosperity Depend 
on a Healthy Soil 
T HE fundamental principle of physical 
life is nourishment and all vegetable and 
animal life is supported on nourishment 
from the soil. 
When the soil contains all the elements 
that nature requires for healthful life, the 
nourishment is complete and we have a 
healthy soil, healthy plants, healthy ani¬ 
mals and healthy people. Starvation 
causes disease, degeneration and death. 
When the soil is deficient in lime it causes a chemical, 
physical and bacterial change of the soil and destroys' 
the friendly bacteria- that produces healthy plants. 
If the soil is deficient all plant and animal life is starved, 
diseased and degenerated. 
Our soils are deficient in five of the basic elements 
of life—calcium, carbon, phosphorous, potassium and 
nitrogen—with the result that all vegetable and animal 
life is seriously affected. 
Regenerate the soil and thus regenerate all plant and 
animal life. The great problem is to secure the crushed 
raw limestone and phosphate rock to make it possible 
for agriculture to practice the permanent method of 
fertility. The problem is to work out some means 
whereby they can be supplied to the farmers at the 
lowest possible cost and credit extended to the farmers 
to pay for them in a term of annual payments. 
The physical life of the nation, the life of the soil, 
depends upon the regeneration of the soil. The most 
practical w r ay to regenerate the soil is by what is 
known to agriculture as ; the permanent method of 
fertility which, in brief, is restoring the jlime and 
phosphorus to the soil and by the use of legumes 
avail ourselves of the biological fixation of atmos¬ 
pheric nitrogen which restores the nitrogen and humus 
to the soil. 
If the people of the nation would realize that life, 
health, prosperity 7 and happiness depend upon a healthy 7 
soil, and would assist agriculture to practice the per¬ 
manent method of fertility, which means health, pros¬ 
perity and happiness for all of the people, it would re¬ 
deem humanity from degeneration and disease.—E. 
A, C., Connecticut. 
* * * 
Does Wrong Feed Cause T B 
USED to be a farmer, and still run a farm by proxy, 
so to speak, I used to know how to feed cattle 
according to the most approved methods, which were 
taught at the Massachusetts Agricultural College 
from which I was graduated in 1916. No doubt feed¬ 
ing methods have changed some since then, but judg¬ 
ing from the farm paper advertisements I do not notice 
much change. Since leaving the farm and entering 
business and having a family to feed that were not get¬ 
ting fresh farm vegetables gratis, it has been the con¬ 
stant study of Mrs, Whitney 7 and myself, to know 
what was best to feed ourselves and family. We have 
read many books and other information, and the whole 
thing boils itself down to this; “Eat the natural diet 
that the distant ancestors of man and the primates 
eat. They 7 all had the same teeth as we and we are 
made to eat the same food as they.” Recently 7 I had 
the pleasure of a talk with Dr. J. H. Kellogg of Battle 
Creek, who strengthened my ideas, that w 7 e w 7 ere not 
made to eat meat and refined flours, etc. We were 
meant to eat hard, natural food and plenty 7 of succu¬ 
lent food and fruit. 
What has all this to do with the prevention of tuber¬ 
culosis in cattle? Just this* If people can be almost 
cured by the proper diet, of this disease, why can’t 
cattle? If tuberculosis germs are in the lungs of every 
man, woman and child in America and in every 7 bull, 
cow and calf, what must be the cause of the disease 
developing? Obvio’usly 7 the weakened resistance of 
the individual. What weakens this resistance? Im¬ 
proper diet and air and exercise. When you feed peo¬ 
ple white flour with all of the calcium and other min¬ 
erals that the system require extracted, and when these 
minerals are needed by 7 the body to fight off the attacks 
of T B and other diseases, is it any wonder that the 
diseases develop? 
If you want to cure T B in cattle, do it as the sani¬ 
tariums are doing it, Find out w’hole foods and feed 
them. Make the diet as near the natural diet as y 7 ou 
can. Give more sunlight to the cattle and more exer¬ 
cise. Perhaps that is the trouble. Naturally cattle 
are rangers. Unnaturally, they stand with their heads 
in a stanchion most of the time. I feel that tne Gov¬ 
ernment should take this feeding in hand and find out 
what is proper feed, and whether exercise and sun may 
not be the controlling factor, 
I hope that y 7 ou get somewhere in your campaign, 
and that these few words are not amiss. -L. F. W.. 
Massachusetts. 
* * * 
How I Broke a Mean Cow 
Y EARS ago my father had a mean cow. She fresh¬ 
ened at two years and kicked so badly that he used 
a rope harness to pull her up toward the stanchion in 
a bunch while he milked. This cow would not lead, 
and it was terrible the way the men beat her. When 
she was twelve I took care of her, fed, brushed and 
petted her every day. She had cast her withers at 
the last freshening and we were doubtful 
as to the outcome as she was due to freshen 
again. 
I had her fat and she calved easily, a 
fine heifer weighing one hundred pounds. 
Just before she calved another cow calved 
in a stanchion beside her and stepped on 
one of this cow’s teats, nearly severing it 
half w 7 ay up,, I had on my hands a very 
difficult time to break her of kicking. First 
I got a swivel with a strap on each side to 
go around each hind leg above the hock. 
There is an improvement made of metal 
and chain in use now. but I did not know 
of it at the time. It took patience to get 
the straps on, but gradually I got her to 
stand so well that it was necessary only to 
hitch a strap on one leg, and finally I did 
not use them altogether. At last I had her 
so I could put the rope on her, lead her to 
the fence and sit down and milk her with¬ 
out trouble. 
I saved the injured teat and this cow 
at nearly twenty years of age was giving 
twenty 7 quarts when fresh. She was not 
sold until she was in her twenties. She 
would never let a man milk her without 
hitching a strap on one leg or both, but a 
woman could milk her anytime without 
trouble. 
It is not necessary to beat a kicking 
cow; it doesn’t do any good, harms the 
cow, and frightens all the others I have 
broken many 7 a heifer to milk, and have 
not had a kicker among them. The time 
to get them broken is when they are small, 
before they freshen. If they are sore and 
kick, then perhaps the bag needs attention 
to reduce swelling. I am a mother and only 
a woman can understand the severe pain 
attendant with the establishment of the 
milk flow. 
There are very’ few cows that are actu¬ 
ally mean. I have herded fence breakers 
both on foot and horseback that had 
strayed for a distance, and although it is 
provoking, one must confess, that the 
fence and not the cow is usually to blame. At any rate, 
all the pasture fence that has ever come to my notice 
was sadly in need of repair. 
In this section it is usually 7 one of the best cows in a 
herd which gets into the habit of breaking fence. 
When I had to sell one for that reason I sold to some¬ 
one who had a fence that would hold her, explaining 
the reason why I had to sell. This did not reduce her 
price any, saved me a lot of bother and the risk of losing 
the cow, and placed her in the hands of a satisfied 
owner,— Mrs. C, H. E., New Hampshire. 
A Sensible Plan for Selling Dairy Feed 
{Continued from page 4-53) 
paid in two weeks you get 26 per cent, and if paid in one 
week 52 per cent. 
This should pay for your accounting and collecting. 
I long since reached the conclusion that above all other 
features of a retail feed business, the most vitally im¬ 
portant is to see that the possibilities and probabilities 
of turnover in your different lines are rightly considered 
in fixing your selling price and I also long since realized 
that the turnover of a dollar is never completed until 
you get that dollar back. 
The time has come when the feed dealer must learn 
that he cannot profitably 7 loan money as a competitor of 
the bank on very indifferent credits and put it out 
{Continued on page 461) 
Copyrighted 1924 by the New York “Tribune*" Inc 
WE WOULDN’T HAVE TO PUMP HALF AS HARD IF IT 
WEREN’T FOR THE LEAKY BUCKETS 
Darling in the New York Tribune. 
