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THE COW

THE OPEN COUNTRY BOOKS

A Company of Genial Little Books about the
Out-of-Doors

UNDER THE EDITORSHIP OF
L. H. BAILEY
1. Top Appue-TreeE . . . . L. H. Bawsy

2. A Home VEGETABLE-GARDEN . . .
2 6 « «© » « EnLa M. FREEMAN

3. THe Cow. . . JARED VAN WAGENEN, JR.

4. VACATION ON THE TRAIL, EUGENE DAVENPORT

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STV au0j}S P[O PUB SoUIAVI 9]}}I] puB SYOOL puB sae1} JO PUR, Y,,— aYAISVg AVAY FHL ‘[

The Open Country Books—No. 3

THE COW

BY
JARED VAN WAGENEN, Jr.

jem ork
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922

All rights reserved

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

SF #39
W%

CoryriaHt, 1922,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and printed. Published October, 1922.

(OQ 2 65%4

Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Company
New York, U. 8. A.

TO
THE BY-GONE MEN OF HILL-
SIDE FARM WHO WERE DAIRYMEN
ACCORDING TO THE LIGHT OF
THEIR DAY AND GENERATION

PREFACE

THIS little book does not pretend to be a text-
book nor a treatise on dairy husbandry, for there
are plenty of such books already. It is simply an
effort to set down the ideas of a dairyman concern-
ing his own business and to view the cow as a very
interesting animal who after all these thousands
of years of close companionship with man still re-
tains many primal instincts and many hereditary
tendencies. So we may ask the meaning of old
winding cow-paths and little calves hidden in. the
bushes and the tragedy of the herd bull condemned
to spend his days tied to a post by a ring in his
nose (like Sampson, old and blind, grinding meal
for his conquerers) when his place is to march
proudly at the head of his obedient herd.

Dairying has grown into a vast and complex and
exceedingly modern business, conducted in great
manufacturing establishments with white tile and
steam sterilizers and pure cultures and ‘bacterial
counts; yet there ought to be a place to revive at
least the memory of old farm houses under great
trees and herds winding down the road at milking-
time, and farm women making butter in cool spring-

houses or shadowy white-washed cellars. Such
vii

Vili PREFACE

things were still within the memory of him who
writes, nor is he old. And it is confidently hoped
that this attempt will have very direct and prac-
tical value to the present-day dairyman, for he
cannot expect his best success unless he has a real
regard for his cow and likes to read about her.

Farm_butter-and-cheese-making are rapidly £o-
Ang ; the way of the farm spinning-wheel and the
loom. Horace Bushnell, Connecticut preacher and
author, “Speaking at a town centennial in the
middle of the last century and looking back on the
memory of his youth and the domestic manufac-
tures of that time, lingeringly and Tovingly called
it the “Golden Age of Homespun.” The corre-
sponding age of dairying is about to go forever, and
in some respects the world will be the poorer
thereby ; but this at least remains: That we men
who would farm not only for to-day or to-morrow
but for the generations yet unborn must have the
animal as part of the farm scheme. Agricultural
content and permanent prosperity are typified best
not by a plow on a field arable, but by flocks and
herds winding over green pastures.

So this little volume is not an attempt to reduce
cow-keeping to cold demonstrations of chemistry
and physiology and bacteriology—and cash—but
rather to strike the personal note and to speak of
dairying ¢ on one old_ hill farm and to put into lan lan-
guage a little of the glow and the glamour of Teal
farm life, JARED VAN WAGENEN, JR.

CONTENTS

The Kingdom ofthe Cow .... . 1
Concerning the Cow Herself. . . . . 9
The Similitude of the Cow . . . . . 25
The Cow, Mentally and Instinctively . . 33
Concerning Cow-Pastures and Cow-Paths. 43
Concerning Old Stone Walls and Cows and
Other Things ... . ‘ 61
The Cow Tribes . . . .... . Wi
The Rearing ofthe Calf. . . . . . 82
The Care of the Milking Herd . .. . 89
The Healthofthe Herd . . .... 99
The Depreciation and the Renewal of the
Dairy Herd. . . . : 107
The Judging of Cows . .... . 116
The Dairy Farmstead . . . .. . 124

The Construction of the Dairy Barn . . 133
Concerning Dairying asa Business. . . 141

THE COW

I
THE KINGDOM OF THE COW

As the Pilgrim journeys through the Farm
Country, he may come to the long reaches of the
great river where luxuriant plenty broods over the
land, where the smooth landscape lies in checkered
squares, where the flat grain fields stretch away to
the horizon and the earth yields her increase to
even a careless husbandry. In regions such as
these are grown the grains that figure in the prod-
uce exchanges of the world. When the Pilgrim
leaves behind him the broad stretches of the fertile
plain and sets his face toward the Hill Country, he
will come to a pleasant land where the brooks run
in narrow valleys and rocky pasture fields fenced
by old stone walls cling to the slopes of the hills
and springs of pure water bubble up beside the
road. He will find close snuggled in the elbow of
the valley old farmsteads under spreading trees,
and perhaps a row of shining milk-cans sunning
beside the kitchen door. Then there will be big

red barns with silos, and on the alluvial soils along
1

2 THE COW

the water course and climbing a little way up the
hills will be close-turfed luxuriant meadows and
young corn fields shining and dancing in the
breeze. If it be near evening there will be merry
children coming home from school and patient
herds with full udders waiting at the bars for milk-
ing-time, and boys coming for the cows will call
to them “Co-boss, Co-boss, Co-boss”—the same call-
ing-ecry that English-speaking farm folk have
known for many centuries. By these tokens the
Pilgrim shall know that he has come unto the
Kingdom of the Cow, for be it noted that the cow
comes into her own and rules unquestioned only
where Nature has not been too kind.

So it will be best for us at the beginning frankly
to recognize the fact that most of us are dairymen
by force of circumstances. Of course, every good
farm is suitable for cow-keeping, but when we
speak of a “dairy-farm” we really mean one which
is capable of giving good returns when used in this
way, but which can hardly be recommended for
general agriculture. A cursory survey of the typi-
‘cal farm scheme of different localities will demon-
strate the correctness of the general statement
that where lands are fertile, level and easily tilled
and climatic conditions are kindly, men steadfastly
refuse to milk many cows. The truth is that we are
all as lazy as we dare to be, and on land naturally
fertile and adapted to the use of modern machinery
it is possible to make a living by types of farming

THE KINGDOM OF THE COW 3

that demand less sustained effort and skill than
dairying. For this reason the typical corn-belt
farmer is not a dairyman, nor is he likely to be-
come one. I am not sure but that deep down in
his heart he really despises the man who will milk
a cow, deeming it women’s work or worse. Rather
would he guide his three-horse draught team and
riding plow, laying the long furrows of his quar-
ter-section, or see his shocks of wheat standing like
‘the tents of an army in orderly array or lave his
hands in the stream of golden grain as it pours
from the threshing machine. Not for him is the
cow with her bovine ways and the personal service
and undeviating round of attention which she ex-
acts from those who would succeed through her.
Yet unconsciously he fills his place in our agricul-
tural economy, for some one must grow the world’s
-coarse, cheap, staple crops of wheat and corn and
hay. He and his ilk may be said to follow agri-
culture along the line of least resistance. His (ex-
cepting only the grazier) is the type of farming
that calls for the minimum of both labor and skill.
Under favorable conditions, ie., with abundant
fertility and good markets, it may yield ample re-
turns and may accumulate considerable agricul-
tural wealth, but if unintelligently followed the
end is confusion. It is soil-mining rather than
permanent agriculture. Sooner or later come fall-
ing crop yields, and with them social and economic
decay unless a system of purchased plant-food and

4 THE COW

humus-maintenance be introduced. In the past
this soil-miner has been only a sojourner in the
land with his face set toward the new country of
our unconquered West. Recently he and we have
rather suddenly awakened to the fact that there
are no more great undiscovered agricultural em-
pires in America, and this has resulted in much
writing and orating and taking stock of our agri-
cultural resources.

There is another and very much higher type of
farmer who is a gardener and fruit-grower rather
than a dairyman. In localities favored as to soils
and market conditions, horticulture has possibili-
ties of production and profits that are undreamed-
of in dairying. Always, however, large areas of
the less favored lands of this country can best be
utilized in maintaining cows. There are some con-
spicuous examples of successful fruit-growing on
lands that do not readily lend themselves to gen-
eral crop production, but broadly speaking our
_ dairy lands are those which, on account of de-
ficient plant-food, steepness, presence of stone or
poor drainage, are not utilized for cereal cropping
and at the same time have no horticultural adapta-
~ bility.

Just which farms and localities belong to this
category is a matter of individual judgment and
community experience. Perhaps 75 per cent of
New York and an even larger proportion of New
England farms will find their best possibilities

THE KINGDOM OF THE COW 5

when used for dairy purposes. In the South and
West the percentage is smaller, while in the best
of the corn-belt country dairying is usually inci-
dental to other agricultural methods. In a general
way, all those farms in the East where pastur-
age is necessarily an important part of the scheme
are typical dairy farms. Some steep and rocky
fields now used for pasture properly belong to the
class of forest lands. There are other areas too
thin and poor to be grazed profitably by milch
cows, which in large units might possibly be
utilized for sheep, especially those of the Merino
type. In the West it is the sheep and the steer
rather than the cow that promise the best use of
the semi-arid regions. Taken all in all, the old
northeastern states, together with Minnesota and
Wisconsin, may fairly be termed the Kingdom of
the Cow.

Of course, fertility and topography are not the
only factors that determine the location of the
dairy industry. Climate, especially in the past,
has played a most important part. Before the in-
troduction of artificial refrigeration, the handling
of dairy products required ice or at least cold
spring water and cold cellars for storage. These
essential conditions restricted the industry to the
North. Even now, cow-keeping has never attained
any large place below Mason and Dixon’s line.
This failure of dairying to establish itself in the
South has a social as well as a climatic signifi-

6 THE COW

cance, for the negro, either slave or free, has always
been the main dependence for agricultural labor,
and as a race they are perhaps less calculated than
any other to bring to the cow the intelligence and
systematic attention necessary for success. In
fact, the distribution of our various types of agri-
culture is in many ways a matter of racial stocks.

Up in some of the northern counties of New York
and over across the line in the domain of King
George are localities where dairying is supreme—
where we find Presbyterian churches and spotted
Ayrshire cattle and big, high-stepping Clydesdale
horses and strong-featured men with a burr-r-r in
their speech. These are Scotsmen who sought a
better country, but have remained most loyal to
the animals and the worship of the homeland. It
is this same Scot who has given to the ancient
dairy county of Delaware, in New York, not only
stern standards of living but also perhaps the most
highly specialized dairying in America. Likewise
in the Middle West and in Minnesota and Wiscon-
sin, it has been the Dane and the Hollander and
the Swede, together with the emigrant from old
New England, that have turned much of these
states into cow pastures. On the other hand, the
Italian and the man from eastern Europe turns
very readily to horticulture. He trims vines and
grows onions and potatoes and garden truck, and
with the aid of his mate and brood cuddles and
caresses the earth into fruitfulness, for he is to the

THE KINGDOM OF THE COW 7

manor born, but only slowly does he come to love
the cow.

Of course, to a certain extent, markets are a
determinative factor in the distribution of the
dairy industry. However, the years tend to level
advantages in this regard. Markets are a matter
of time and accessibility rather than of distance
and freight rates. Better transportation, together
with a little sound dairy bacteriology, have greatly
extended the zone of market milk production.
Fast express service and refrigerator cars have
made it seem very simple to carry milk in first-
class condition for many hundred miles. A short
stretch of muddy country road is a greater handi-
cap than a hundred times as far of gleaming steel
rails. Both New York and Boston draw their milk
supply from at least six different states. Possibili-
ties like these are upsetting our old ideas of market
advantages. This was not always so. Orange
County once deemed that it had a natural monop-
oly of the New York City milk trade, and not
so long ago “up state” butter went west to Chica-
go. Men were glad to believe that there was a
mystical something in the air or the water or the
grass that would forever bar the cow from the
Mississippi Valley. Any hope of this kind has
proved but “a vain thing for safety,” for the cow
has constantly found her way into farther places.
Nearby markets are no more necessary for milk
than for small-fruits and perishable vegetables.

8 | THE COW

This much at least is certain: that with the
years the Kingdom of the Cow is a constantly
widening empire. Even like the sheep of which
Vergil wrote, she “hath a golden hoof.” To some
one-time fertile regions she comes late, but she
“comes to save. When the soil-miner has wrought
his perfect work and the earth no longer gives her
increase—when seed for the sower and bread for
the eater grow scanty—then the cow comes to the
rescue. From the beginning she has exemplified
the doctrine of soil conservation. Where she makes
the land her own, green carpets of pasture possess
the fields, alfalfa throws its perfume to the breeze
and corn waves and rustles in the sunshine. There
great new barns rise in place of the old, and white-
walled farmsteads speak of peace and plenty.
There contented farm folk found dynasties by
striking the roots of their lives deep into the soil.
“And of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”

It
CONCERNING THE COW HERSELF

THERE is somewhere a story about a painting in
which the menagerie is represented as trooping up
the gang-plank into the ark in orderly array, ac-
companied by Noah himself, carefully bearing a
tin box inscribed, “Papers relating to the origin
of the DeLevis family.” Very much the same sort
of loving service has been rendered by the natural-
ist to the cow. The geologists have patiently dug
the million-year-old skeletons of her forebears out
of the earth and have christened them with long
hard names, and the zodlogists have taken their
present-day and extinct representatives and have
referred them to one or to several species, each
mman according to his own ideas of the philosophy

of classification. We may dip but lightly into zo-
; dlogy by saying that all our domestic cattle are of
European origin and perhaps the dominant species,
Bos taurus, may do for a family name. If we are
born zoélogists rather than dairymen, we may read
‘books with prints of fossil skeletons and skull
measurements and discussions of dentition for-

mule, and may at least have the satisfaction of
9

10 THE COW

finding out that Bos taurus was a variable species;
and after that we can leave the matter to the com-
parative anatomist.

In the conformation and the habits of the pres-
ent-day cow there are many things we cannot un-
derstand unless we suppose them to be reversions
to something in the remote ancestry. The expand-
ing science of genetics may change our conceptions
of some of these matters; yet even genetics is
based strongly on the conception of the continuity
of heredity. It is pleasant to conjure the past and
to try to explain contemporaneous facts on tenden-
cies we assume to have been present through the
long course of time, unless, indeed, we can dem-
onstrate their origin now and then in modern
nutrition or other factors. By this practice of ret-
rospect we endeavor to reconstruct for ourselves
something of the conditions of the earth and of
man in vast former time.

For our purpose let us rest content with the
general statement that for unknown centuries
and up until early historic times, wild cattle
roamed the forests of Central and Northern Europe
and the British Isles, presumably entirely undo-
mesticated and uncontrolled. Very fortunately, in
certain old European parks, a few specimens of
these cattle have been preserved so that we may
know something of their appearance and habits.
Their color markings at least were peculiar. They
seem to have been great brutes, typically white in

CONCERNING THE COW HERSELF 11

color, with brown or black ears; even today there
is an occasional reversion to the ancestral type.
Solid white is not an infrequent color among
Shorthorns, and a good many years ago on Hillside
Farm we came into possession of a rather elderly
cow of dubious quality and checkered ancestry.
She was even as the “milk-white bull” on which
Priscilla, bride of John Alden, rode on her wed-
ding day, but her ears were brown. I used to say
to myself and her: “Old cow, you are the heir of
all the ages. Your ancestral story goes back and
links with the days when Abraham drove forth
his herds from Ur of the Chaldees and Job’s sheep
lay sick in the land of Uz, and drowsing shepherds
watched their flocks beneath the stars on the plains
of Shinar. In you there may be the blood of fa-
mous Shorthorn sires and the blood of dairy
queens. It may be a thousand generations ago some
far-off savage men had first dominion over you.
Your characters have been buried beneath the accu-
mulated mass piled up by many masters and chang-
ing environment, yet once again, like the geologic
outcrop of buried strata, that long forgotten color
of the wild ox has reappeared in you.”

This white cow with her brown ears was a truly
remarkable example of color reversion such as
would not appear once in many thousand times,
but many cattle show dark patches inside the ears
which may fairly be regarded as a tendency to hark
back to primitive coloring. We forget, perhaps,

12 THE COW

how almost infinitely long is the history of the do-
mestication of animals. Indeed, in the case of
cattle, so far as exact names and dates and opera-
tions are concerned, there is very little before the
great Thomas Bakewell and contemporary breeders
less than two centuries ago, but its beginnings go
back before our books and beyond tradition and
even beyond the days when were accumulated the
mounds of refuse in front of the cave-man’s door.

We are fond of dwelling on the great gulf that
separates our excellent dairy cow from her forest-
roaming ancestor, and it is all true, yet, after all,
the veneer of domestication—or shall we call it
civilization—is very thin. The cow, as also man,
is still an animal of many primitive impulses and
hereditary memories. So long as she is undis-
turbed, she seems very much a creature of habit.
As Isaiah long ago wrote, “The ass knoweth his
owner and the ox his master’s crib.” She stands
patiently at the pasture bars and answers the call
of her owner and does violence to all the instincts
of her motherhood by unresistingly offering her
udder to the hand of her milker, yet in time of
stress she seems very quickly to fall back into her
primitive wildness.

I have repeatedly seen young heifers turned into
a back pasture for the summer who, owing to lack
of attention and contact with man, have “gone
wild” and in a few months have forgotten all the

CONCERNING THE COW HERSELF 13

external evidences of domestication. The heifer
that in spring was so much a part of the barn
family that she could hardly be made to step out
of your path and that would follow like a dog
with the hope of a word and a lick of salt, is
capable of apparently forgetting in a few weeks
her age-long training and contact with man. I .
have seen them sniffing the breeze with elevated
head and distended nostril and flickering ears, and
at sight of their one-time master bounding wildly
away through thickets and over fences, nor hesi-
tating, if cornered, to turn and fiercely fight him
who under normal conditions they fully recognized
both as master and protector. Once having re-
verted to this condition, they will keep to the
woods by day and feed by night, and can be re- —
claimed only by the art of the trapper or even the |
hunter. Yet if brought to bay and established
under the care of man, the domestication of cen-.
turies promptly reasserts itself and the old de-
pendence on man and trust in him comes back |
completely.
It ought to be said in passing that in this respect
at least, the domestication of sheep seems much
more complete than that of cattle. Sheep seem to
have more of dependence and something allied to
affection. They learn to answer to a calling-cry
much better than cattle and to follow and obey to
a greater extent. I have never known sheep, no

14 THE COW

matter how long neglected, to fail to welcome the
coming of the master by crowding around him with
long bleating of welcome.

So, too, we must not blame the bull because he
is sometimes sullen and often wild and dangerous,
for after all, he is merely true to the instincts by
virtue of which he went lowing at the head of his
band of females and fought off his rivals and held
his place only by the ordeal of combat. The life
we condemn him to lead is itself the tragedy of the
farm world, and as he stands wearing out his
years in solitude and loneliness, chained by his
nose in a darkened stall, I wonder does he ever
have flashes of hereditary memory or tantalizing
dreams of a far-off time when he stalked the wood-
land at the head of his herd, master of all he met,
and the valleys echoed to his roar and the earth
trembled to his battle charge? May we not fairly
assume that the fierceness of bulls is now the com-
paratively feeble survival of a once most vital but
now long disused character, which we may sup-
pose is slowly dying as the generations pass? We
must not blame him for what he cannot help. He
may never be a playfellow for our children, and
we must always consider him as a potentially dan-
gerous brute whose pent-up instincts may suddenly
flame forth in uncontrollable fury; yet even the
bull is not insensible to the power of kindness and
we must use him with gentleness, remembering
what his nature bids him be.

CONCERNING THE COW HERSELF 15

Doubtless it is true that with the progress of
domestication our animals, even as man himself,
are leaving behind them many characters which
were once supremely vital, but under changed en-
vironment are first disused and then forgotten.
A number of such questions are connected with
baby calves and bovine motherhood.

Unquestionably there was a time when the cow
brought forth her young only in the spring, merely
because it was then that the weather was warm
and the grass green and abundant, and hence the
calf born then stood the best chance of survival;
and so by the stern law of biology, this spring-time
birth became a firmly fixed character of the cow,
ingrained into her very constitution through long
centuries. But when cattle come to be kept under
the entirely artificial conditions of regular care
and certain shelter and assured food supply at all
seasons, this spring-time birth habit ceased to be
advantageous and has been largely lost, although
it seems that even now the birth time tends to
coincide with the ascending sun.

On the other hand, as has been noted, sheep seem
in some ways to be more truly domesticated than
cattle, but so far as the lambing time is concerned,
they obey ancestral habits more closely than the
cow. The mating instinct in sheep lies practic-
ally dormant during the summer months, arousing
only when the cool autumn nights come on; and
so the normal lamb is born with the coming of

16 THE COW

spring sunshine. The rearing of the so-called “hot-
house lamb” makes it most desirable to have the
young dropped in the early winter; but in this,
with every effort, only partial success is possible.
The same spring-tide reproduction is noted in poul-
try, for egg-laying practically ceases in- the three
months farthest removed from April and May;
and the wild fauna of our fields and woods render
almost perfect obedience to this same law. The
fact that. the cow and the horse have largely
forgotten this ancestral trait bears testimony
to the vast period of time which must have elapsed
since they became subject to the control of man.

Other phenomena connected with maternity are
being modified with the generations. For example,
in those breeds of fowls in which the egg-laying
tendency is most highly developed, the instinct
of the female to sit upon the eggs to incubate them
is surely far weaker than once it was and has be-
come most uncertain and capricious. Doubtless
there was a far-off time when the cow guarded her
young calf most jealously and, if necessary, fought
off the wolf and bear, with lowering head and
flashing horns, although she does not, like the
horse, use her hoofs in combat. But of this old
mother instinct only the rudiments are left.

To the dairy cow of today, the birth of a calf
is an incident rather than an event. She seems to
reason that it will be well taken care of anyway
without any particular attention on her part. On

CONCERNING THE COW HERSELF 17

the whole, she obeys certain instincts, but obeys
them feebly. If at pasture, she will commonly
choose an isolated or partially concealed spot
where her calf will be born, but she is likely to be
surprisingly careless about it afterwards. I have
seen more than one cow so lost to the sense of duty
that she absolutely refused to grant her offspring
its first meal. However, the manifestation of
mother-love varies greatly in different individuals.
There are some cows, who are, to use a barn phrase,
“crazy -for their calf,” but this is the exceptional
animal. Many cows trouble themselves very little
about it. The idea of a cow mourning for her calf
like “Rachel weeping for her children and will not
be comforted because they are not,” is a pretty bit
of fiction which is hardly borne out by the facts.
In most cases, the cow, given her choice between
her calf and a feed of silage, will basely take the
silage.

There is one strange bovine habit, however, that
at least gives ground for surmises. Many, per-
haps most cows, will, on the birth of a calf, devour
the fetal membranes, a procedure surely utterly
at variance with her usual ideas of diet. There is
really no rational explanation for this most as-
tonishing practice unless we assume that the prim-
itive cow did this in order that it might not at-
tract the beast of prey and so reveal the location
of her calf. If so, does the mother cow, standing
at ease and safety in a box-stall, respond to some

18 THE COW

dim hereditary memory of what her own ancestor
did a thousand and more generations before? Or,
may modern science find that this unusual diet
supplies some need of the bovine body at this par-
ticular moment?

It seems to me that the young calf exhibits more
of the primal instincts of the wild than does the
mother. Under native conditions, it must have
been some days after birth before it began to run
by its mother’s side with the remainder of the herd,
and during this period if there was any one idea
that was firmly stamped into its little bovine brain,
it must have been never, never to betray its pres-
ence by movement or voice. So in obedience to
this training, the baby calf will lie quietly for a
very long period unless aroused by its mother. I
do not know how long the calf would remain quiet
and I certainly have never had the heart to try. It
will often lie for twenty-four hours and probably
much longer. I doubt not that the youngster gets
very hungry and possibly lonely, but it does not
forget its hereditary training. Stoical philosopher
that it is, it curls up, pokes its soft little nose into
its furry flank and tries to sleep the hours away
until mother shall come and give the glad signal
that everything is well.

Very frequently I have gone to give the young-
ster its first lesson in drinking, and have found
him so sleepy and suspicious of my well-meant at-
tentions that I could not arouse any interest in

‘shUp IaqopOQ UL prey VYI—Lsay Ly “IT

——

gates

Baas

Bice

CONCERNING THE COW HERSELF 19

getting his first meal out of a tin pail, yet the com-
ing of the mother with just a low mother-call or a
caressing touch of her tongue would almost in-
stantly find the calf alert and ready for a meal
from her udder. The lamb seems to look out on
this cold world with different vision, and if long
neglected by its mother announces the fact to
everybody by piteous baby cries or bleating.

It seems remarkable that the new-born calf con-
trives to nurse as quickly as it does. Usually
within an hour or two after birth, with wide un-
seeing eyes and wobbly uncertain footsteps, he
staggers against his mother and promptly finds his
way to her full udder. Of course, under modern
dairy conditions, the calf is allowed to nurse in
nature’s way for only a day or two at longest and
then is suddenly and rudely snatched from the
maternal fount forever and compelled to take his
meals out of a bucket supplied by a man in over-
alls. The greatest wonder is how rapidly he man-
ages to accommodate himself to changed condi-
tions. For untold generations the calf has learned
to look up and search when it is hungry. We com-
pel him to do the diametrically opposite thing, to
lock down and drink with its nose at the level of
its feet. No wonder we think it stupid and some-
times lose our temper, yet generally from three
to six tactful lessons will suffice to establish the
new habit. It is commonly said that the calves of
our special dairy breeds learn to drink more

20 THE COW

readily than the beef breeds, which is what we
would expect, for the former have been accus-
tomed to this mode of infantile feeding for many
generations.

The dairy cow today is so completely a creature
of artificial environment and acquired habits that
we can only guess how the calf and its mother
fared in the old days. Doubtless she nourished
him and guided him and, if necessary, fought for
him the first summer, and by autumn he was a
lusty thick-haired youngster. Then as the time
of her next calf drew near, her udder ceased to
yield anything to him. Her mind was filled with
plans for the new baby, and he straightway thank-
lessly forgot her and drifted away to frolic or
strive with his kind. On the modern dairy farm,
the calf’s ideal of a mother is typified by a herds-
man with a bucket of skim-milk, while the material
affections and instincts of the cow go out to a
man with a tin pail and a three-legged milking
stool; and that is why family ties grow lax in the
dairy world.

Both historical evidence and climatic adapta-
bility point to the fact that the cow is a native of
temperate or cold regions. She is apparently not
at home in the tropics, and even in our South At-
lantic states she tends to diminish in size and vigor,
although this is possibly due to deficient food
supply and the scourge of the Texas cattle tick
rather than mere questions of temperature. With

CONCERNING THE COW HERSELF 21

. winter protection she does remarkably well in very
severe climates, and the well-fed steer thrives and
enjoys himself in the open in temperatures below
zero. It has been noted, however, that, unlike
sheep, cattle do not dig or paw away the snow to
get at the grass beneath, and this would indicate
that the cradle of the race was not habitually snow-
covered in the winter. On the other hand, like
deer, the cow readily browses the young twigs of
trees when grass is scanty.

We can only guess concerning the history of her
domestication. There was surely a time when she
roamed the woodlands and knew not the restraint
or the protection of the hand of man. The cave-
man snared or trapped her and gorged himself on
her abundant flesh, and with a sharp stone stripped
off her skin and shaped it into a rude covering
against the cold. The human slowly and labori-
ously struggled up toward fore-thought, thrift and
civilization, and one day a wise old savage and
philosopher of the tribe made an infinite advance
when he said, “Would it not be better to capture
and tame some of these fine beasts and from them
rear others in order that we may have them al-
ways at hand for food and skins instead of depend-
ing on the uncertain chances of the chase?” and
that day the first Animal Husbandman arose.

And another time some great thinker of the clan
Observed that some of his increasing herd served
his purpose better than others because of size or

22 THE COW

vigor or perhaps because of color markings that he
fancied, and he reasoned, “May I not kill the calves
of the cows that please me least and preserve the
calves of those that I like best and thus improve
them all?” and that day the first Breeder stood
forth and systematic improvement was begun.
And then again, when the mother of a tiny human
babe had died—killed perhaps in a savage foray
by a neighboring clan—the bereaved father in his
helplessness and tenderness bethought himself of
drawing milk from a female of his herd and thus
preserving the life of his child, and that resource-
ful father became the first Dairyman. Advances of
this kind once made were never lost.

There is every reason to think that the genus
Bos readily yields itself to domestication. We
must remember that domestication means far more
than mere training. The animals of a menagerie
may be tamed and look to man for food and may
be taught certain habits and tricks, but they can
hardly be called domesticated. The real test of
domestication is the free reproduction of young
under the changed conditions, and few animals
when kept under artificial confinement will meet
this test. Not only this, but the way in which
oxen are readily broken as beasts of burden show
how completely their impulses have become sub-
servient to the will of man.

In any case, the written history of the cow is
very short as compared with her unknown past.

CONCERNING THE COW HERSELF 23

The story of her domestication, if we knew it,
would be that of the race. The tale of her con-
quest begins when man first emerged from a wan-
dering hunter into a pastoralist and began to build
circular or mud huts beside the water-courses.
Before recorded history, the domesticated cow ex-
isted, and the earliest books of the Old Testament
—those that speak to us concerning the child his-
tory of the race—are musical with the bleating of
sheep and the lowing of cattle and the tinkling of
the bells of the camels. The domestication of ani-
mals and man’s struggle out of savagery went on
side by side, because only after he had acquired
beasts of burden that could draw the plow or
move objects that were beyond his strength was
it possible to make any progress in agriculture or
permanent architecture.

The observant farmer-naturalist of the future
will have new problems to challenge him, if he lives
in warm-temperate and hot countries, because of
the introduction of a very different strain of blood
in recent years. This strain is the zebu or Bos
indicus, the sacred cow of India. The zebu is intro-
duced with the hope that crosses with common
cattle will better adapt the animals to warm cli-
mates and diseases. One sometimes sees the marks
of such crosses in the lighter color, lopping ears,
heavy hanging dewlaps, recurving horns, hump
over the shoulders, and the very different eyes.
What permanent effect these introductions will

24 THE COW

have we do not yet know; and what traits of
ancient ancestry may come from the oriental coun-
tries will be an interesting observation for future
generations to make.

When some day a great artist shall worthily
idealize on canvas the epic story of the American
pioneer as he lays the foundations of civilization
in the wilderness, his trusty animal co-laborers and
messengers in the task will be pictured not as pranc-
ing steeds, champing the bit with distended nostril
and flashing eye—such as Ulysses had at the siege
of Troy—but they will be great beasts with placid
eyes and mighty shoulders and heaving flank and
wide-spreading horns, the glorious ox-team.

A drowsy cow beside the bars again

Patiently waiting for the herdsman’s call

With dim and far-off memories in her brain,—
What would she say if she could tell them all?

Comes to her visions of an ancient past
Before man’s yoke upon her neck was laid
When thundering down aisles of forests vast
She made one of a sweeping cavaleade?

Can she feel honor that she holds such place
In the world’s need that unto her it clings ?
The burden bearer of the human race,

The foster mother of its proudest kings.

The twilight comes—fades from the sky the light,
Low in the west the star of evening swings

And couched in fragrant pastures through the night,—
I wonder if she muses on these things?

III
THE SIMILITUDE OF THE COW

SoME years ago one of the educational institu-
tions, in furthering its nature-study work, asked
the school children to draw an outline picture of a
cow. One pupil in New York City sent in a sketch
—certainly original—showing a cow with udder
extending from the hind legs to the forelegs. I
suppose the youngster had taken the pattern from
the good old text-book picture of Romulus and
Remus suckled by the she-wolf; but the child had
never known a cow, perhaps had never seen one.
His experience of country things was much like
that of another pupil in the same city who thought
clover was part of a box because a certain article
of food had come into his home in a container with
a clover-leaf brand. We who live in the open fields
little realize what crude mental pictures of animals
and plants lie in the minds of thousands of our
people.

Note the cow lying down. Her fore feet fold
back under the body; her hind feet project forward.
but are not covered; her body is not flat on the

ground, but tilted over to one side, the hind quar-
25

26 THE COW

ters lower and flatter, the front quarters usually
more erect, the head generally elevated above the
line of the shoulders, with variations as noted in
Chapter IV.

When she gets up she lifts her forequarters on
the elbows, then places her hind feet on the ground
and elevates the rear quarters, then brings up the
fore parts to full stature. She stretches herself
taut, lowering her head in the process, whisks her
tail to one side, and is ready for any new event.
The horse arises by getting up directly on his front
hoofs, then raising the hind quarters.

Once before you, the cow is a ponderous bulky
beast, the very mass of her—if she is of the big
breeds—striking fear into the minds of the timid
as they see her rise. She seems to shake the
ground. The huge bulk conveys an impression of
angularity,—a massive rectangle with projecting
prominences at the hips and above the front legs,
thick neck supporting an elongated head carried,
when in resting position, in an upward direction.
The front legs stand straight and post-like under
the weight of front body and head, about equal in
length to the vertical width of the carcass; but the
feet stand obliquely downward and forward from
the legs, bearing the weight by strength of liga-
ments rather than by direct impact, making the
support to look indirect and insecure. The hind
legs do not have the post-like effect. They are
placed well toward the end of the rectangle; the

THE SIMILITUDE OF THE COW. 27

bones present a series of angles, and the hock or
joint points backward; the feet are set obliquely,
as in front. But while the support appears to be
insecure—an appearance that is much accentuated
when the skeleton is in view—the series of angles
and indirections provide for movement in all direc-
tions and great elasticity of stride. The hoofs are
two-parted, carrying forward the line of the lower
leg and fetlock, and make the characteristic double
footprint. The tail hangs straight from the top of
the hip, continuing the extension of the backbone,
with the fly-brush comprising the lower half; it is
well provided with muscles and is capable of mak-
ing a quick and powerful sweep.

In general, the back presents a straight line
from hip to shoulder, often with a downward curva-
ture; the line rises slightly over the shoulders, and
then takes a downward and upward curve to the
poll of the head. The lower line of the body pre-
sents a graceful upward curve at the rear, disclos-
ing the udder; thence there is nearly a straight
course to the front legs; and beyond and be-
tween the legs extends the brisket, like the prow
of a ship, following upward into the folds of
the soft dewlap that depends from the neck.
The most graceful part of the animal is the
upper neck, attractive in conformation, flexible,
soft and pleasant to the feel; it is about the neck
that one wants to throw the arm, for a cow re-
sponds to affection.

28 THE COW

The cow and the horse have different methods
of accomplishing the same end. The horse must
not be allowed to fill himself with water after a
long hot day in the fields lest he get indigestion,
but the over-heated ox refuses water until cooled
off.

Both animals have specially adapted organs for
grazing but quite unlike. The cow has thick and
relatively immovable lips, but she has a tongue
which she can protrude far out of her mouth and
she uses this as a sort of sweeping organ to grasp
and gather the grass and pull it into her mouth.
She can use it as skillfully and daintily as an
elephant uses his trunk. The tongue of the horse
has no special adaptability in this regard but he
is furnished with a prehensile upper lip that is a
marvel of sensitiveness and delicacy and that per-
mits him to pick up and bring to the mouth single
kernels of grain in a way that seems almost in-
credible. Cows have front teeth on the lower jaw
only with a tough cartilagenous pad above; in
grazing their food is torn or pulled off rather than
bitten off. The cow does this by seizing the grass
and then pulling it off by a forward motion of the
head, that is, she “eats away from her self,” while
the horse grazes by a backward pull—eats “toward
himself.”

Cattle eat rapidly and swallow the food with
little chewing, relying mainly on subsequent mas-
tication. As soon as she is satisfactorily filled and

THE SIMILITUDE OF THE COW 29

can find time for solid comfort and contemplation,
the cow regurgitates the food and each bolus or
“cud” is thoroughly rechewed and ground, several
hours of each day being given up to this (for her)
very pleasant task. Each “cud” is commonly given
from fifty to seventy strokes of the teeth before it is
swallowed and replaced by a new portion. Calves
chew more rapidly than older animals. The cow
that is seriously sick ceases to ruminate and if she
again “finds her cud” it is joyfully hailed by her
owner as an evidence of returning health. An in-
teresting comment on how late ignorance and su-
perstition linger among us is the fact that a genera-
tion ago many cow-keepers believed that the cud
was a definite something—a sort of personal pos-
session belonging to a cow and that if she was so
unfortunate as to “lose” it she must have some spe-
cial help to replace it. Many weird combinations—
a hunk of fat, salt pork being one of the most ap-
proved—were forced down the throat of sick cows
in a well meant effort to supply this particular
need. Not only “loss of cud” but “wolf-in-the-tail”
and “hollow-horn” were classic ailments of the old-
time quack cow doctor. For “hollow-horn” he
bored a hole in the horn with a gimlet and poured
in turpentine. If the miserable cow died, he cut
off her horn for the satisfaction of the owner and,
lo, it was hollow! an incontestible proof of the
correctness of his diagnosis. This may sound like
fanciful invention or a tale of the Dark Ages, but

30 THE COW

it was established veterinary procedure within the
memory of living men.

The normal udder of the cow has four teats as
compared with two teats in the mare and sheep
and twelve to sixteen in the sow. However, it is
not at all uncommon to find two smaller additional
or supernumerary teats and these have frequently
been regarded as an evidence of special dairy excel-
lence, but they detract from the appearance of the
udder and many breeders make it a rule to cut
them off as soon as noted in the calf.

Twins among cattle are exceedingly rare.
Within the memory of the writer there have been
more than a thousand calves born on Hillside
Farm, and among all these only one pair of twins;
but probably twins are rather more usual than
would be indicated by this particular experience.
When one twin is a bull and the other a heifer, the
latter is called a “free-martin” and there is a very
old and persitent notion that she will prove barren.
This is not what we would expect if reasoning from
analogy, but the idea is widely accepted and two
trustworthy men have assured me they have tried
it out and that the popular belief is correct. Twins
among horses are the rarest possible occurrence
and horsemen aver that they never survive. On the
other hand, among sheep, especially some breeds,
twins are the rule rather than the exception while
triplets are not rare. Piggies come into the world
all the way from one up to twenty or more, and

THE SIMILITUDE OF THE COW 31

wise old mothers often manage to raise in excess
of a dozen.

It is a surprising fact that while so far as we
know the wild cow was horned and the whole genus
(Bos) bears horns, yet we have long had well de-
fined races of hornless or polled cattle. The truth
seems to be that hornless sports (‘“mooleys” in the
farm vernacular) appear from time to time among
all breeds and these show a strong tendency to
reproduce the same condition in their offspring.
The establishment within a few years of a herd-
book for Polled Jerseys and also for Polled
Durhams or Shorthorns indicates that it is not
especially difficult to fix this variation when it
appears. The prepotency of the polled breeds is
very strong and the offspring of the first cross with
horned breeds will be hornless in most cases.

From the standpoint of the dairyman the pres-
ence of horns is an unmitigated nuisance, so much
so that the dehorning of cows hay become a very
common custom. The animal is fastened securely
and the horns removed with a thin small-toothed
stiff-backed saw, taking care to make the cut close
enough to take a little circle of skin with it in
order that there may be no further growth of the
stub. The horn is hollow, and the operation is not
so laborious as it sounds. This method makes a
less serious wound than that caused by the use of
the clippers. Doubtless it is a very painful opera-
tion, but it is kindness in the end and our New

382 THE COW

York law specifically declares that it is not cruelty
to animals within the meaning of the statute. De-
horned cattle, either milch cows or steers, herd
together much more closely, and it practically does
away with the danger of injury to the udder from
hooking, an ever-present source of loss in the
horned herd. Hornless animals may also be se-
cured by applying a little caustic potash to the
embryonic “horn button” of the three-day-old calf.
Of course the logical plan would be to use hornless
breeds and this is easy among beef cattle because
there are already three well-known polled breeds,
but unfortunately all our most highly developed
dairy types are horned.

In size the cow ranges all the way from the
little Kerry cattle of Ireland, which are the pig-
mies of the race, up to the great Shorthorns which
are probably a little the largest of the breeds. The
Kerry cow Red Rose was a famous prize winner of
the breed but she is said to have stood only 38
inches tall at the withers. Some mature Kerry
bulls have weighed only 400 pounds as compared
with weights of 2500 to 2600 pounds—not at all
uncommon in fat show bulls and steers of the beef
breeds. Indeed there is at least the story of a
Shorthorn ox reaching the almost incredible weight
of 4300 pounds. The males are always much
heavier and when mature should weigh about one-
half more than a female of the same relative devel-
opment.

IV;

THE COW, MENTALLY AND
INSTINCTIVELY

I HAVE been endeavoring to write a description
of the cow—trying to see her in the same way that
John Burroughs saw the robin or chipmunk or rab-
bit or woodchuck in his forest walks, or as Thoreau
watched the wild life that strove or gamboled at
the door of his lodge on Walden Pond. I must say
that I do not think the cow lends herself to the
same sort of treatment or, at any rate, the task is
different and more difficult. All the native fauna
of our fields and woods has been living under the
same set of conditions for uncounted generations.
An unchanging environment has tended to iron
out all differentiation and variation. The present
form, size, protective coloration, food and shelter
habits, every biological character of the wild life
of our farms represents an adaptation, presum-
ably a very perfect adaptation, to the conditions
under which they must live. Thus there has re-
sulted for each species a very firmly fixed and al-
most unvarying standardization of type. Any

marked deviation or mutation from this type would
33

34 THE COW

be disadvantageous and hence would tend to be
extinguished. So in wild life our differences are
those of age and sex and season, but, eliminating
these, almost any chipmunk might sit for the por-
trait of his race.

As soon, however, as we turn to domestic ani-
mals we find an entirely opposite condition. The
cow for thousands of years has been under the
control of man. With him she has crossed the
seas to new conditions and strange environments.
Because the conditions of life that surround her
have altered, she has changed herself to fit them.
This tendency toward mutation has been greatly
intensified by the conscious selection of man, and
many unusual variations that in her native wood-
lands would have been extinguished have been
encouraged under the hand of man, preserved, and
perpetuated. Thus, from being once almost im-
mutable, she has become, together with the dog
and domestic fowl, the most uncertain and varied
of animal forms. The ornithologist describes our
native birds with most painstaking care and
minute accuracy and, at the expense of infinite time
and patience, makes colored plates of their plum-
age and markings. What would he do, however,
if asked to describe a hen and then taken to the
poultry show to gather subject matter? How is it
possible, therefore, to describe the color of a cow
when she wears almost every conceivable shade
except the blues and greens and every possible

THE COW, MENTALLY 35

pattern or irregularity of color markings? Or
what shall we say of her horns when they may be
wide-spreading and very large or small and
“crumpled,” when they may be black-tipped or
ivory white or yet the color of amber, or not in-
frequently they may be entirely absent? What is
the trick of language that may enable the dweller
on Mars to vizualize her? Plainly the cow cannot
be described in the few terse, zodlogical, almost
mathematical phrases that might picture the rac-
coon. At best we must describe her as a type
rather than a sharply cut species.

The most interesting traits of the cow are not
physical but mental. Every farm boy who has
lived with her and driven her from pasture and
milked her and taught the calf to drink knows
that she has a rather definite psychology.

I think I can uphold the contention that most
animals under domestication (the horse and dog
being exceptions) are mentally degenerating as
compared with their wild forebears. Even
civilized man has degenerated in some respects, or
perhaps a kindlier statement would be that some
powers which he once possessed have been allowed
to fall into disuse. Stewart Edward White writes
that he has seen the Indian of the Canadian wilds
stoop and smell the footprint of a moose and then
promptly announce whether it was made within
an hour or a day—a performance inconceivable to
the civilized white man. Doubtless, we are not as

36 THE COW

keen of scent or as fleet of foot, nor can we climb
trees or resist cold as did our savage ancestors,
but in place of these powers we have gained other
attributes that are infinitely more worth while.
During the centuries the cow has left behind
many habits and her instincts grow progressively
more feeble. Once she had to live by her wits, to
avoid and, if necessary, to fight off her enemies and
to search for a food supply which was often scanty
and always uncertain, but under the care of man
she has become the most pampered of animals.
Our modern idea of dairy conditions is that the
cow shall never be allowed to be hungry or thirsty
or cold. She is waited on with the most as-
siduous attention, for the owner knows that dis-
comfort on her part will immediately be reflected
in a decreased milk-filow. Thus her special senses
are slowly dying, but two functions have at the
same time been abnormally developed, her udder.
and her digestive apparatus. Holstein cows have
given nearly thirty times their own weight of milk
in a year—a marvelous performance made pos-
sible only by the fact that along with this abnormal
development of the mammary glands there has
been an equally remarkable development of the
digestive function. The ideal dairy cow tends to
approach the status of the queen bee, in which all
the ordinary habits and instincts of the bee have
been made subservient to an almost helpless or-
ganism that must be fed great quantities of pre-

‘speeiq AIIep ay} JO poyeUTUIEssIp
Ayepra pue repndod ysom oy} St pue[[OH JO Moo a4IYM pus YoRyq 31q e[—NIALSTIOH AHL, “III

THE COW, MENTALLY 37

pared food in order that she may lay 3000 eggs a
day.

Intellectually and morally, a very good case can-
not be made out for the cow. Her standards of
ethics and honor are low. In her conduct toward
the other members of the herd she is both cruel and
cowardly. Cattle by nature are polygamous, rov-
ing in herds with an old bull at the head who holds
his place against all comers by ordeal of combat.
Therefore, the instinct to fight is very strong
among bulls. If a number of young bulls run in
pasture together, they seem to settle satisfactorily
the question of precedence and get along very well,
but strange bulls fight on first introduction until
it is definitely settled who is victor. These com-
bats are sometimes rather spectacular with much
pushing and scufiling but apparently with very
little real injury to either party. This combative-
ness seems to crop out in the cows as a sort of
secondary sexual character, and every herd of any
size will always have some hooking and fighting
going on, resulting sometimes in serious injury
to the udder. The cow shows herself a mean
coward, because frequently, if one cow is fast in
the stanchion and hence unable to defend herself,
another not yet fastened will pitch in and gore
her most unmercifully until she bellows with pain
and terror. So also many cows standing in their
stalls with a fellow on each side will strike with
their horns first on one side and then on the other

38 THE COW

in an effort to prevent their stall-mates getting any-
thing to eat.

However, cow life is not quite all eating and
fighting. Cows greatly enjoy licking all parts of
the body that they can reach, this probably being
the bovine ideal of a careful toilet. It is rather
amusing to see another cow very carefully bestow-
ing this attention on the head and face of a neigh-
bor who, of course, cannot reach them with her own
tongue. It is hard to decide whether the giver or
the recipient derives most pleasure from this ser-
vice.

The thrilling moment in the life of a cow is that
wonderful day in late May when, after a long win-
ter of confinement in the barn, she is again “turned
out” to the pasture. That gala day stirs up all her
old instincts and hereditary memories. Playful-
ness except in the calf is rare among cattle, but
in the first hours at pasture the whole herd will
often indulge in a wild rush, circling the field with
tails carried erect, high over the back like banners
and with strange awkward cavorting and galloping
—for all the world like the rush of a lot of young-
sters let out of school. The most ardent admirer—
or apologist—for the cow can hardly claim for her
grace of movement. Well fed and thrifty calves,
during the first weeks of life, enjoy giving vent to
their high spirits in much galloping in circles with
clumsy kicking up of the heels, frequently accom-
panying such gymnastics with resounding calfish

THE COW, MENTALLY 39

“br-a-a-a-ah.” The adult indulges in such foolish-
ness only on very special occasions, and the first
day at pasture is one of these. When hard driven
by a dog or anxious to rejoin the herd from which
she has been separated, the cow is capable of a
straightforward running gait that very easily out-
strips a man, and will even rival a good horse, but
the cow merely disporting herself has a particu-
larly grotesque, plunging, wobbling gallop.

The herd on the first day at pasture eats very
little for the first two or three hours. Rather it
is an occasion for exploration and perhaps for
surprise and annoyance that her domain is now
so narrow, for she once roamed over many leagues
instead of being limited by a fence-line inclosing
only a score or two of acres. Life for a cow at
pasture is made up of periods of grazing alter-
nated with intervals when she lies at ease to pursue
the pleasant task of chewing the cud while diges-
tion prepares her stomach for another fill. As a
rule, the resting cow assumes the attitude of lying
squarely on the brisket and elbows (knees, in the
incorrect speech of the farm) with the hind legs
drawn up under her while she rests on one hip or
the other, but occasionally she varies this position
by stretching out at full length as if she were dead,
even the head lying on the ground. This rather
unusual position is more common with young
heifers or calves. If pasture is abundant a very
few hours a day suffice to gather her food, but

40 THE COW

when scanty she must industriously pick all day
for a living and even then is not fully fed, as the
milk pail only too plainly attests. The real ro-
mance for the cow as well as her owner lies in those
first golden weeks of early summer.

The gregarious instinct in cows is strong, and
they tend to feed in a fairly compact herd. As you
come near them you can see the long almost pre-
hensile tongues gathering and sweeping the grass
into the grasp of the jaws, and you can hear the
gentle tearing sound as it is pulled rather than
bitten off. An hour or two later the cows will be
lying down, often closely bunched together, and
in hot weather they are wise enough to choose the
shady borders of the wood. They enjoy water in
summer, and will often stand leg deep in bright
running streams or ford considerable rivers. They
do not, however, have the habit of wallowing in
the mud after the manner of their close relative,
the buffalo.

Unquestionably, there is a sort of mass-psychol-
ogy in a herd which leads them all to do the same
thing at about the same time. The farm boy who
has always “brought” the cows as a part of his
boyhood tasks well knows that if a part of the herd
thinks it is about time to move toward the bars,
all of them will prove to be of the same mind. Yet
this same farm boy also knows that an occasional
cow is a very poor mixer and will commonly be

THE COW, MENTALLY 41

feeding in a far corner by herself when the re-
mainder of the herd has decided to go and see
whether it is milking time. As a whole, however,
the order of feeding and resting and traveling
seems to rise from a common impulse.

‘ In one phase of pasture life, however, the cow
attains a sort of impressive dignity and that is
when she is definitely “on the march.” It is fine
to see a large herd of cows who have suddenly de-
termined to make a pilgrimage—it may be merely
to go for a drink or to explore a distant part of
the pasture. There they go, largely strung out in
single file, heads up, looking neither to the right
nor left, no foolishness, no distractions of eating or
casual fighting allowed, but every matron stepping
briskly off as if under orders. I feel sorry for
them. It seems like a pitiful effort to rehearse
within the limits of a pasture field the old-time
long marches in search of far-off feeding grounds.
Truly man has come to have dominion over her.
To me the most interesting and impressive thing
about the cow is this; that she still remains a sure
foundation for biological musings and a riddle in
atavism. Written history is short, but her story
is very long. She is an ancient of the earth, and
her career is linked with the forgotten men of the
Old Stone Age who pictured her in rude outlines
scratched upon the walls of their cavern homes.
Her minor characteristics, her size, color, con-

42 THE COW

formation and function have been modified almost
beyond belief. Her very instincts no longer profit
her, yet she still responds and acts on the sugges-
tions of dim far-off hereditary memories.

vV

CONCERNING COW-PASTURES AND COW-
PATHS

THE first dairyman was wholly a pastoralist. He
proved himself a wise farm-manager and a skillful
feeder when he led his herd where the pastures
were richest, and after thirty centuries the Hebrew
idyl, “He maketh me to lie down in green pas-
tures, He leadeth me beside the still waters,” re-
mains the world’s most beautiful symbol of ten-
der and loving care.

The quest of pasture has been one of the primi-
tive forces that have made history. Many of the
great early migrations, which have forced whole
peoples across deserts, over mountains and into
new valleys and strange lands, have been the re-
sult not so much of the lust of power and the
glory of empire as the insistent necessity for new
pasture grounds. The thirteenth chapter of
Genesis is not only an excellent sermon on the
settlement of family quarrels, but it is also an
illuminating treatise on the early pasturage situa-
tion in Palestine. “Lot also, which went with

Abram, had flocks, and herds, and tents. And the
, 43

44 THE COW

land was not able to bear them, that they might
dwell together: for their substance was great, so
that they could not dwell together. And there
was a strife between the herdmen of Abram’s
cattle and ‘the herdmen of Lot’s cattle. And
Abram said unto Lot, Let there be no strife, I
pray thee, between me and thee, and between my
herdmen and thy herdmen; for we be brethren.
Is not the whole land before thee? Separate thy-
self, I pray thee, from me: if thou wilt take the
left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou
depart to the right hand, then I will go to the
left. And Lot lifted up his eyes, and, beheld all
the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered every-
where. Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan;
and Lot journeyed east: and they separated them-
selves the one from the other.” Thus briefly did the
Chronicler set down the story of an ancient quar-
rel and its wise settlement, and that same story
has been repeated in every country and age until
now, and nowhere more bitterly and insistently
than in these very years in the range country of our
own western states.

Pasturage surely represents the first beginnings
of agriculture. Doubtless herds grew to large
numbers and wandered widely before any man be-
gan to set up landmarks and boundaries and to

claim a certain portion of the earth’s surface for __.

himself and for his heirs and assigns forever.
Only when one man’s pasture range began to en-

COW-PASTURES AND COW-PATHS 45

croach on another’s did he do this but once hav-
ing set up his claim he must needs defend it with
his life if necessary, and so all our land titles rest
originally on force or fraud, never on equity. It
was a far cry from the time when men merely
herded their animals until they began to till the
ground on any considerable and systematic scale.
In the days when animal-keeping merely supple-
mented hunting and root-digging, there were no
large fields and no rotation of crops and no regu-
lar sowing and reaping. This at least seems to
have been the rule among all Old-World peoples.
The American Indians, on the contrary, among the
most advanced tribes grew considerable areas of
corn and beans and even planted orchards, but save
for their dogs seem to have been without domesti-
eated animals. The probable explanation is that
almost all the animals of our farms today are of
Asiatic or European origin and in all North
America, with the exception of the bison, there
would seem to have been no large easily domesti-
cated grazing mammal.

Unquestionably the first cow-keeper relied solely
on pasture, and only after considerable advance-
ment did he develop foresight enough to provide
stores of food against times of scarcity, such as
drought in summer or snowbound winter months.
It must be confessed that some cattle ranchers in
our own western states have hardly gotten beyond
this same primitive practice, and every year their

46 THE COW

cruel and careless methods allow cattle to perish
from starvation and exposure. In exceptionally
severe winters the loss has been appalling both
from a financial standpoint and from the animal
suffering involved. As a matter of fact, all our
farm animals exhibit extraordinary ability to with-
stand—or more correctly to live through—hard
conditions. It was long a fireside tradition of the
Susquehanna Valley that when the Cherry Valley
massacre took place in the autumn of 1778, involv-
ing the captivity or murder of most of the settlers
and the extinction of the community, some horses
wandered off into the woods and one of them at
least was not reclaimed until three years later,
having somehow survived all the vicissitudes and
rigors of the winters of the central New York
plateau. It is certain that a race of hard ponies,
descendants of horses, shipwrecked there long ago,
can thrive perfectly on the coastal islands of tide-
water Virginia.

There are still many parts of the world, includ-
ing our own western range country, where prac-
tically all animal industry depends on pasture—a
type of agriculture which is primitive and ineffi-
cient and must eventually give way to a wiser and
more careful husbandry. This system can survive
only on lands that are very cheap and abundant or
else so steep, rocky, or unproductive as to forbid
regular rotation and the use of the plow.

Viewed in the light of present-day methods, our

COW-PASTURES AND COW-PATHS 44

dairy ideas of a half century ago were certainly
queer to say the least. Practically all dairy prod-
ucts were made from grass in summer, and the
barn was frankly regarded as a sort of cold-storage
proposition for the purpose of keeping cows alive
until summer came again and green grass in the
fields should enable them to give milk. Of course,
there were even then occasional dairymen—men
in advance of their time—who were wise and
liberal feeders, but as a whole they seem to have
-had grave doubts that a cow could really yield
milk when there was snow on the ground. Under
this idea there were long months when men had a
barn full of cows but no milk, and a generation
ago one still spoke of a “coffee cow,” meaning
thereby a cow kept “farrow” and fed with unusual
care in order that she might supply a scant ration
of milk for this dairyman’s family during the win-
ter months. All this was a part of the old era
when barns were frigid and windy structures,
stables cheerless dungeons and when there were no
silos and grain was deemed too valuable to be fed
to cows. She was expected to receive somewhat
less than a maintenance ration of corn-stalks and
over-ripe hay and to become progressively more
lean and hungry as the slow winter dragged itself
along. She was expected to be “spring poor,” and
no one regarded it as either a joke or a reproach
to her owner. This is no exaggeration of what
might be called typical dairying within the mem-

48 THE COW

ory of many living men. Yet, with the coming of
May and balmy days and springing grass, these
same cows gave birth to their calves and under the
very favorable conditions of pasture won back
flesh and strength and vitality sufficient to carry
them through another winter and incidentally to
give considerable milk and brought to their owners
what in that day was deemed substantial dairy
prosperity. Had those cows been human instead of
bovine they might, when filled with grass and a
great content in the golden month of June, have
moralized in the words which Shakespeare puts in
the mouth of Gloster, “Now is the winter of our
discontent made glorious summer.”

From those bad old times the science of cow-
keeping has changed so radically that the best
dairymen have come to make milk in winter rather
than summer. Warm and sunny stables, comfort-
able stalls, silage, early cut hay and liberal grain
rations have made the cow and her owner inde-
pendent of weather conditions. So far as milk
production is concerned, June is hardly more fay-
orable than December. Indeed, in the making of
Advanced Registry records, where the aim is to
force a cow to the last possible ounce of her milk
yield, it is generally agreed that the winter is the
most favorable season of the year. So also we feel
sure that the well-cared-for cow that “comes fresh”
in October will yield more milk in the next twelve
months than if she calved in April.

COW-PASTURES AND COW-PATHS 49

All this does not contradict the fact that even
under modern conditions, pasture is still of prime
importance in dairying. There are now, and in-
creasingly will be, men located on very valuable
land which is level, fertile, and easily tilled, who
will feel that they cannot afford to pasture it, but
will depend instead on soiling crops grown under
conditions of intensive culture. In some cases this
will be good farming and sound management, but
on the whole, our dairying still rests on a basis
of pasturage.

It is not a foolish boast,—it is a fact that New
York state is the real Kingdom of the Cow.
Among the states of the Union it stands only
seventeenth in available acreage, but it ranks first 1
in the value of its dairy products. Up in the
North Country of New York the fields are fairly
level, but the old glaciers have made them a dump-
ing ground for their granite debris. These bowlder-
strewn and often poorly drained fields cover large
areas of no possible agricultural use except for
pasturage. St. Lawrence County has more than
96,000 dairy cows—a striking example of how a
people has adapted its farm scheme to the environ-
ment.

Down in the southeast of the state are the two
remarkable dairy counties of Orange and Dela-

1New York state seems to fluctuate between first and third
place. She probably stands first in value because so much of
her product sells as liquid milk.

50 THE COW

ware where the cow has been supreme for a cen-
tury. It is here where as nowhere else the romance
of the old days survives. Long ago the old Orange
County Bank printed its bank notes in golden yel-
low to signify that butter was the source of the
wealth and prosperity of the county. The whole
agricultural scheme of this region rests on the fact
that the valleys are very narrow and the hillsides
too steep and rocky to till, yet out of these same
hills burst springs of pure soft water, and cover-
ing them is a carpet of small, sweet, natural
grasses which have made them as famous in story
as the blue-grass regions of Kentucky. Along the
Pennsylvania line from Delaware County to the
Chautauqua grape belt is the “Southern Tier,” a
region of river valleys with much not too fertile
upland that more and more is coming to realize
that it is fundamentally a land of cow-pastures.
Indeed, when one comes to survey this great state,
one realizes that ultimately the dairy cow will pos-
sess the land everywhere save on Long Island, parts
of the Hudson Valley, the beautiful cereal-growing
Finger Lake country of the western counties, and
the favored golden orchard section of the Ontario
shore. Conditions of soil, topography, rainfall,
markets and even heredity and racial stocks have
been the determining factors which have made
dairying the premier industry in our northeastern
states. In a word, the cow has gone in greatest
numbers where there were large sections of land

COW-PASTURES AND COW-PATHS 51

suited for pasture but not for a more intensive
agriculture, and any extensive scheme of dairy
practice must recognize this fact.

It is true that the changes and advances of re-
cent years have made pasture of relatively less im-
portance than of old, but nevertheless the annual
revenue derived from these old hillside pastures
is a vast sum. For example, the preéminent month
of all the year for milk production is June, and the
tremendous flood of milk which each year almost
inundates our manufacturing facilities and de-
moralizes our markets is produced wholly from
pasture. Our fathers expected a cow to derive her
entire living from the open fields from the middle
of May until the last frosted grass of late October
was closely bitten off. We of a wiser generation
have come to understand that there is only a month
or two in the year of really good pasture. Progres-
sive cow-keepers almost universally supplement the
grass after July 1st with grain, or better, with
liberal feeding of silage stored the previous Sep-
tember or else with fresh-cut oats and peas in
mixture or other soiling forage.

Pasture is at once both the cheapest and most
expensive of feeds—cheap because the cow gathers
it herself and because we usually set a low value
on the land where it grows, and yet expensive as
the total nutrients to the acre of pasture are so
small as compared with those secured from more
intensive cropping systems. It requires an acre of

52 THE COW

the very best or two of fairly good pasture to feed
a cow for the summer months and even then she
will not be really fully fed after midsummer. On
the other hand, it is quite usual and feasible to
grow fifteen tons of silage corn to the acre or
enough to furnish the main roughage requirements
of three cows for the full feeding period of two
hundred days when they get no food outside.
When fields are steep and rock-strewn, we may
still rely on a primitive pasture husbandry for a
large part of our summer feeding, but it is a
wasteful and extravagant method where lands are
level, fertile and easily tilled. This does not alter
the fact that there are very many farms whose
prosperity is bound up with their pasture areas.
If we study the question, we cannot escape the
conclusion that the value of our great pasture re-
sources is declining with the years. This decline
is not rapid and perhaps it may be so slow that the
owner fails to be really aware of it, but if he com-
pares the carrying capacity of a pasture now with
its ability many years ago the downward tendency
becomes evident. As farmers we have been very
slow to realize that permanent pastures, like all
other lands, need fertilizers and care. We have
been quick to agree that land which is plowed
and sowed and harvested by a machine needs
manuring, but there has been a widespread yet
mistaken notion that land lying in pasture will
improve under opposite treatment. There is abso-

COW-PASTURES AND COW-PATHS 53

lutely nothing either in theory or practice to justify
this belief. It is true that the total quantity of
plant-food in all good soils is very great; yet it is
not unlimited and it cannot be subtracted from
every year for generations without some day ap-
proaching the end of abundance. There are perma-
nent pastures where in many cases for a century
the cows have been carrying away everything that
grew and where there has never been any pretense
of returning either fertility or grass-seed. The
owner now wonders vaguely why that old hill does
not seem to feed as many cows as it used to in
grandfather’s time. Of course, the argument is
that while the cow takes everything off the land,
she immediately returns her manure in liquidation
of the debt. This line of reasoning is very faulty
because some of this fertility is permanently lost
to the farm and some of it is redistributed to other
areas. Mere pasturing does not constitute soil con-
servation. When we remember that each ton of
milk contains, say, twelve pounds of nitrogen, four
pounds of phosphoric acid and four pounds of
potash, and that these old pastures have been fur-
nishing scores of tons of milk annually for genera-
tions, and when we add to this the much more
serious loss due to other causes, we see that our old
pastures present a very serious problem in soil
depletion.

In general, these old worn fields are to be treated
in one of three ways. Those reasonably free of

54 THE COW

large stones and trees and level enough to admit
the use of modern farm machinery ought to be
plowed and, for a season or two at least, put into
the regular rotation of the farm. A pasture that
can be handled in this way does not constitute a
real problem.

There are other fields too valuable to abandon
but not practicable to till. These should be helped
out with applications of lime, acid-phosphate and
grass-seed—never forgetting the grass-seed—he-
cause pasture failure is not a question of depleted
fertility alone, but is also due to the fact that the
grass plants have died out and there are no new
ones to take their place. Grass plants do not live
forever, any more than do the trees in an orchard,
and the only method of renewal that we know is
scattering grass seed in early spring. Much has
been said about this, and many kinds of seed have
been suggested ; but we may at least remember that
the ideal pasture is a mixture of blue-grass and
white clover; so whatever else we do, let us not
forget the “grass that made Kentucky famous” and
the plant which is said to furnish two-thirds of the
commercial honey crop of eastern North America.

Another class of so-called pastures ought never
to have been cleared of forests in the beginning.
They have in them no possibilities to justify the
expenditure of either labor or fertility, and the
quicker Nature takes them back to her kindly pro-
tection, the better. With them, the best policy is

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COW-PASTURES AND COW-PATHS 55

frank abandonment, with forestry. Perhaps a
generation yet unborn may cut a crop of lumber
from them two or three centuries hence.

There are some very familiar and commonplace
objects and scenes in whose very nature there
inheres an indefinable charm which we cannot ex-
plain or analyze and which yet has a very real and
distinct value in life. To this quality we sometimes
give the name of romance or sentiment. Doubtless
the ability to thrill to this unexplained force varies
in different individuals and is aroused by different
objects, yet every one must acknowledge to some
extent the sway of these intangible forces. Our
literature is filled with the efforts of men who have
tried to express the emotions they have felt when
in the presence of that which appealed to them.
Men cross the seas that they may stand in the
presence of the mementoes of departed civilization,
“Old, forgotten, far off things and battles long
ago.” Yet I doubt whether anything has in it more
of this mystic appeal than the life of old farms as
expressed in pastures with bright brooks and
spreading trees, and cow-paths worn hard and
sunken in the turf.

Gray’s Elegy in a Country Church Yard is by
common consent the one almost faultlessly perfect
pastoral poem of our English tongue, and when the
poet wished to convey the thought of peace de-
scending with the sunset like a mantle over a lovely
summer land, he hit on that line whose cadence

56 THE COW

once heard must ever linger in our hearts, “The
lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea.” Just on the
side, I am inclined to question the accuracy of the
poet’s observation. In America, at least, cattle do
not spend much time lowing when at pasture. On
the whole they are silent beasts, whereas sheep
bleat long and loud under the slightest disturbance
or excitement. It is true that the cow separated
from her calf (more especially if reminded of the
separation by a painfully full udder) will some-
times low (in the speech of the farm, “beller” or
“bawl’) most persistently. So also, if a part of the
herd has broken out into a forbidden field, those
still left behind will frequently lift up their voices
in frenzied inquiries as to just how it happened. A
high spirited uneasy bull confined in a stall may
make himself a nuisance by “the mimic thunder
in his cry” as he roars out his challenge to his
imaginary rival, but, on the whole, the contented
cow is dumb.

“Wind slowly o’er the lea,’ however, is good
poetry and correct zodlogy. The old migratory
instinct of the wild cow still survives and a herd
ranging in a good sized pasture covers it rather
widely and systematically under a recognized
leadership. A herd will commonly feed for a few
hours until full, and then lie down in a fairly com-
pact group to ruminate, and after an hour or two,
apparently in obedience to a common impulse, they
will get up and start for another part of the field.

COW-PASTURES AND COW-PATHS 57

In these short migrations it will be noted that
certain individuals are nearly always at the front,
while others quite as surely trail along behind.
When thus “going somewhere” they are fond of
walking single file as their well-defined, hard-
beaten, and often somewhat sunken cow-paths
attest.

As commonplace a thing as a cow-path, by the
way, is really a record worth study and musing.
The same path is followed year after year, and if
obliterated by plowing and later the field is again
returned to pasture, it will be reéstablished fol-
lowing almost exactly the same course. The ex-
planation is simply that the cow is a past-master
in the engineering art of choosing the easiest grade
between two points. Emphatically she does not go
over a knoll, she goes: around, and one can only
wish that the pioneers who were responsible for
the roads through our hill country might have had
just a little of this good cow sense. The cow does
not stick to paths when in a hurry or urged on by
a driver, but they make use of them when on their
leisurely journeys. Sheep, by the way, have this
same habit of wandering in beaten trails. I do not
know that the most enthusiastic lover of the cow
will contend that she is remarkable for her in-
telligence. She has neither the spirit and courage
of the horse nor the love of mankind that marks the
dog, nor the devotion to locality as distinguished
from attachment to persons that distinguishes the

58 THE COW

cat, and I am afraid the common barnyard variety
of hog is her intellectual superior. This is as it
should be, for the extreme dairy “temperament” is
characterized by placidity, not to say a phlegmatic
disposition.

The modern dairy cow is a very artificial crea-
ture who by long centuries of environment and
selection has come to have a stomach capable of
digesting unbelievable quantities of food, and an
abnormally developed mammary gland that may
secrete milk enough for three or four calves, while
at the same time she has very largely lost her old-
time keenness of hearing and scent. She remains,
however, a creature of habit and an excellent judge
of meal time, without the necessity of observing
the sun. If she knows that there is a little handful
of meal ready in her manger, she will be waiting
at the bars to meet you at milking time. So also,
the cow with an uncomfortably full udder comes
to understand that relief awaits her at the hand
of the milker, and so she learns to present herself
for his attention. After all, man is not the only
animal who is most strongly appealed to through
the stomach.

In all the year there is just one perfect month
for cows to pasture and that is June. Then the
grass is lush and abundant, and if there be a cow
heaven it must be typified by a pasture field in
June when she lies knee deep in verdant fragrant
grass with the sunlight flooding the land and the

COW-PASTURES AND COW-PATHS 59

pasture brushed with light and shadow, as the
fleecy clouds drift across the sky. With July the
grass becomes less abundant and palatable, and
then begins the plague of cattle flies and lesser
insect pests which sometimes make August a
month of almost maddening torment and seriously
diminish the milk-flow. With the coming of the
first sharp frosts the insects largely disappear,
although they seem particularly savage in their
attacks when aroused during the heat of some of
those wonderful belated summer days that fall in
early autumn.

It often happens that the aftermath may be
grazed in September and early October with most
excellent results so far as the cow is concerned,
although the practice is bad from the standpoint of
maintaining productive meadows. Most of us who
are cow-keepers, however, succumb to the tempta-
tion to follow this easy practice. Some years
when we have a warm moist fall, we may lightly
graze the winter wheat or rye with little apparent
injury to the crop. This lush delicious forage is
unsurpassed,—possibly unequalled among all feeds.
It will never fail to stimulate the milk-flow in the
most astonishing way. However, as October draws
on, the grass becomes short and frosted and less
nutritious and the wise dairyman will usually be
content to have his cows almost on full winter
rations by the middle of that most glorious month.

Doubtless it is true that pasture will be an ever

60 THE COW

decreasing factor in our scheme of dairy industry.
We are told that it is very much wiser and more
progressive and better all around to grow soiling
crops and cut and carry them to the cow in the
barn. One may deliver quite a fine sounding lec-
ture on the economic advantage of soiling cows.
But I am glad that there are so many farms where
cow-pastures can never pass. The rich corn-belt
farmer will let his cows drink water out of an iron
bowl in the stall or out of a concrete watering
trough where water is pumped from a driven well
by a gasoline engine. But my dream-farm will al-
ways have old rocky hillside pastures, threaded
and laced with cow-paths where old trees cast deep
shadows and little ravines with thickets make
caverns of shade, and cows drink out of little bright
running brooks and stand at the bars until the
children come home from school to call them to
the barns. And I like the unremembered Harvard
student who made a verse about it thus:

“She stood at the bars as the sun went down
At the close of a beautiful summer day;

Her eyes were tender and big and brown

Her breath was as sweet as the new mown hay.”

VI

CONCERNING OLD STONE WALLS AND
COWS AND OTHER THINGS

THE final test to be applied to any type of farm-
ing is the kind of rural civilization that is nour-
ished by it. Every one with capacity to call up
visions of bygone things, and who has been so
blessed in childhood and youth as to have known
the life of a well conditioned farm, will possess
within himself a treasure house of haleyon mem-
ories. And every one will visualise a different pic-
ture of many diverse elements, yet each of them at
heart will be very much the same for each will glow
with the perennial magic of the Land.

The old man whose locks are thin and white will
sit in the sun and close his eyes and hear again
across the years the ring of the whet-stone on the
steel and the swishing music of the swinging scythe,
or he will see the rhythmic sweep of cradlers laying
the long swaths of wheat and other men following
them to bind the sheaves with bands of twisted
straw, or he will remember again the bubbly sound
of milk being drawn from full udders into foaming

pails and the muffled gurgle of the old dash churn.
61

62 THE COW

Then too, there will come to him memories of
snowbound days and the sound of beating flails on
threshing floors and the thud of the loom and the
whining song of the spinning-wheel beside the
kitchen fire—for all these forgotten things were
on our farms within the retrospect of many living
men.

And to the man from our corn-belt states will
come pictures of a fat and fertile land where the
sun comes up, not over wooded eastern hills, but
out of a sea of grain and runs his course and drops
down and is lost in corn-fields and meadows.
Boyhood memories to him will be of long straight
corn rows under August sun and the clack of the
grain-binder and the snarl and whine and boom of
the great steam threshing-machine and men going
back and forth across the fields to husk the corn
when autumn frosts grow sharp. These he remem-
bers and many other things. And yet other men
whose happy fate it was to live in our fat Ontario
Shore country will see orchards flowery in May and
great heaps of red and russet apples beneath the
trees, glowing in October days, or will behold again
the gathering of purple grapes when the air is
heavy with the fragrance of the vine and the land
is full of joy, and for him these horticultural mem-
ories will be the best in life. But I am persuaded
that to no one else can come so many visions as to
the boy of the dairy farm.

For I see an old red barn and beyond the barn

OLD STONE WALLS 63

an orchard of gnarled and ancient apple trees which
great grandfather planted when he looked out on
life with sunny eyes a hundred years before. This
orchard had always blooms in May and always
there were apples from August until the last hard
winter fruit was gathered in. There were Ox ap-
ples and Peggy Sweets and Hooks and Goodyear
Pippins and Long Stems, and other sorts unknown
to any pomologist save the farm boy, and their
flavor and their fragrance will never pass. Be-
yond the orchard is a lane with stone walls on
either side and walnut trees and wild beasts of
the forest—chipmunks and chattering red squirrels
and even woodchucks seeking shelter with shrill
whistles of fright. And then at the end of the lane
is yet another enchanted land—a grove of pine

~ trees which dropped down pungent scented cones
and whispered and sobbed even on quiet sunny
days, and which, on windy evenings, when I was
late with the cows, made a great solemn sound like
the sea surf trampling on the sand.

Nor is this all, for beyond the pine grove are
more walnut trees and great umbrella elms and
maples from which to make sugar in the spring.
There is a stream which is bright and clear and
makes a pleasant babble in May and early June,
but grows lazy and feeble as the summer wanes.
If you lie prone on the little plank bridge (as I do
still) and gaze steadfastly into the pool beneath,
you may see darting minnows and dace and even

64 THE COW

suckers, and these fishes years ago were the finny
leviathan of the deep. Then across the brook and
running up against the “mountain” to meet the
woodland are fifty acres of pasture—a land of trees
and rocks and little ravines and old stone walls
mostly fallen down. Here the cattle of Hillside
Farm have come to pasture for all its history and
may, I hope, for generations yet to come. Always
in the speech of our farm it has been designated
as “across the creek,” meaning thereby a region—
and always for me it was an enchanted land. Is
it not a priceless heritage for a boy to have the
privilege when the sun is low, of going through
scenes like these—to climb the hill and call the
cows and send them splashing through the brook
and then on up through the grove and lane and
orchard and to the barn, and after milking to take
them back again and leave them keeping watch
under the stars? On such things as these was my
boyhood fed and my little clear-eyed son also knew
all these enchantments,

You may not judge a farm or determine its value
by the familiar standards of acreage or fertility
or topography or access to markets. You may not
reckon its desirability even by the social charac-
ter of the rural community of which it is a part.
Three things there are which must go to make up
my dream-farm. First, it must be a place where
there are animals as well as crops, for the greatest
interest in country life can come only from breath-

OLD STONE WALLS 65

ing moving things. Of all our animals, no other
has so much of contact with human life and of the
poetry of the ages as the dairy cow. Secondly,
this farm must lie in the Hill-Country so that for
the boy there may be rocks to climb and woodlands
to explore and little ravines to wander in and
great peaceful hills to which he may lift up his
eyes and purple distances across which to gaze.
And thirdly, this farm must be in the old agricul-
tural East with a continuity of history—a farm
to which has come the glory of the years, where
men and women have lived and wrought out their
lives and been gathered to their fathers. There is
in truth something stirring, something epic, in
the pioneer setting up his home on the forefront
of civilization. I am told that men come at length
to love the limitless prarie and its clear distances
and its blowing air. But when I see my ideal farm
it is always with barns and drowsy cows, and it
will lie in the lap of the valley where the summits
of the hills are wooded and blue and far away, and
it will be an old farm so that the folk who dwell
‘there will speak of things in terms of generations
instead of years. And I confess that while good
farming bids us have new barns that are white
within and gleaming with paint without, yet I love
old spreading barns with swallows under the eaves
and colonies of doves within the gables. And I
like farm-houses, good sized and suggestive of
generous life but not too spick and span. For all

66 THE COW

worthy old houses are thronged with ghosts—
ghosts of happy bridals when a young man and a
woman stand, with clasped hands and their eyes
solemn with love and the wonder and the mystery
of it all. There are ghosts of infants haunting
dim upper chambers with memories of hush and
expectation and then of joy because a child is born
into the world. Then there are other and more
somber ghosts telling of how the master of the
farm full of days and honor was ready to leave
the home, and how the masters of neighboring
farms have come in with solemn manner and
carried him first to the old church and then to the
burial place to mingle his own with the family
dust.

Old farms gather to themselves what only the
years can purchase—traditions. There are tradi-
tions of disaster or of success, stories of the lean
years when hail swept the farm in July or when
the corn frosted in August—tales of the fat years
when the wheat at harvest (as once in many years
it did) stood so thick and strong that on the great
billow of bowing heads the men laid the cradle
and it did not fall to the ground. Many are the
stories such as these which cluster around old
farms.

Perhaps if there is any object which represents
the very essence of farm sentiment, it is old stone
walls. There is plenty of utility but very little
sentiment in barbed wire. You cannot sit on a

OLD STONE WALLS 67

barbed wire fence. You cannot even moralize on
it. You avoid it and go around on the other side.
It may have an air of smart newness but nothing
more. A stone wall is lovely in decay. It is al-
ways a text-book of geology, and it is a sure founda-
tion for dreams and memories. I wonder whether
I could love a farm that had no stone walls.
There is a sort of artificial beauty in a carefully
trained hedge beside a velvet lawn, but there is
genuine poetry in a moss-grown and tumbled-down
stone wall in a pasture, especially if there be a
cow-path beside it. A stretch of such wall sug-
gests a volume of farm history. |

So while a stranger or my friend sees only some
acres of grassy hillside with old trees and rocks
and ancient walls, I see more. I see a stalwart
pioneer chopping out a place for the home and the
log cabin rising in the clearing. I see the first
wheat crop growing bronze and golden with black-
ening stumps amid it like tiny islands in a yellow
sea. I see the cabin become a home because there
is a woman happy in her toil and sturdy children
playing by the door. I watch the years slip past
and the domain of the farmer broaden as he pushes
the forest further back from his hearth-stone. I
behold him and his sons and his men and his ox-
team—always the ox-team—as he clears the land
of stones and piles them up into walls, monuments
to his time. I see him through the rich years of
his prime while his family is growing up, wres-

68 THE COW

tling always with the primitive herculean labors
of the pioneer, and then one day I see an old and
time-worn man with a form built for strength but
very still, carried out on his last going, and I see
two of his sons take up the work where he laid it
down, still clearing the land and building always
more walls.

I confess that with us building stone walls is at-
taining the dignity of a lost art. I do not think
this is because we are sluggards but rather be-
cause there are so many mills drawing wire and
such wonderful mechanical fingers weaving it into
ready-made fencing at very moderate prices a rod.

But in the Hill-Country those long gray lines of
piled-up stone represent a very important part of
the epic labors of the pioneer. I believe that the
toil invested in this particular farm activity in
the northeastern and New England states during
the last three hundred years would in the aggre-
gate exceed that involved in building the Panama
Canal or our transcontinental railways. It was
accomplished by men who counted not the hours
and who labored with enthusiasm because they felt
that theirs was a goodly heritage.

The pitiful fact about it all, however, is that
very often this has proved unrewarded toil. It
seems to me that there was something fine about
these earlier generations of men—something that
we have lost. In the Hill-Country of New York
and New England where land values are low and

OLD STONE WALLS 69

agriculture is decadent, there are so often stone
walls laid by some man whose heart beat high with
hope and who wrought at his work with conscien-
tious care because he felt the artist’s pride in his
labors and deemed that he built for children’s
children. I hope that he laid down his good gray
head at the last secure in his faith in the land he
owned. But his son could never know his father’s
steadfast faith. He knew that once the fertile
lands of the great corn-belt states began to pour
their agricultural wealth into the world, the old
régime in the East must pass forever. The open-
ing up of the Mississippi Basin marked the end of
an era in much of the old East, and one of our yet
unsolved problems is the readjustment of the eco-
nomic and social ills that followed.

I am thinking now of an old farmstead which is
locally famous for its walls. It was only a poor
thin farm at best, skirting the narrow valley of a
little creek and running far up against the steep
and rocky hillsides. It is such a farm as can never
give more than narrow opportunities and then
only as the result of grinding toil. Yet on this
farm a man spent a long life, and when he died,
he left it fenced by high, smooth, straight stone
walls. It seems pathetic that a man should so—as
we may be tempted to say—have wasted his life.
Yet perhaps for him there was compensation in
his work. He was a patient sober man of charac-
ter and ideals. I know that men called him a good

0 THE COW

neighbor. I know that according to his vision he
loved and labored for the tiny country church.
We cannot tell but that he worked out what was
for him a sound and satisfactory philosophy of
life as he patiently and skillfully piled stone on
stone. But he is gone, and strangers carelessly
till his loved acres, and the walls are falling down
with the years and no man rebuilds them, and
therein lies the pathos of his story.

This much remains, however, that a stone wall
can never become common or mean. While it
stands, it is a monument to the industry and abid-
ing faith of a strong man, and even when it falls
it is a part of the landscape and not a scar on it.
Gradually Nature hides it beneath shrubs and run-
ning vines, and slowly by geologic law it. sinks
back into the bosom of the earth from which it
came.

Some things in especial measure breathe the ro-
mance and poetry and magic of life on the land.
Such are rows of weather-beaten droning bee-
hives under gnarled and ancient apple trees, and
running streams with cows standing knee deep in
clear pools and long shady lanes with many beaten
cow-paths, and boys calling the cows when the sun
is low, and sunken mossy stone walls, and these
last are the best and richest.

VII
THE COW TRIBES

In those far-off centuries when herds of wild
cattle ranged through the forests of northern
Europe, the individuals were presumably very
much alike in type, size, and color markings. It
seems to be a law of biology that when any species
of plant or animal exists for a long period of time
under an unchanging environment, a general uni-
formity of type results. For example, among wild
deer, the American bison, robins, chipmunks or
woodchucks, with rare exceptions, every individual
of a species is so like every other member that one
exact zodlogical description suffices for all. On
the other hand, when the environment, or the daily
life conditions, is changed, immediately the ten-
dency to mutations is exhibited, the appearance of
individuals possessing new or unusual characters.
The cow has been wonderfully altered under do-
mestication, partly because new traits and charac-
ters have come unconsciously in response to new
surroundings, partly because her master and
owner has encouraged and preserved these new

developments by keeping and rearing especially
oy 71

42 THE COW

the calves of those cows that, judged by his stan-
dards, seemed to him best or most desirable.

In discussing the theory of breeding and the
results that have been attained, we have always
assumed that these changes have come about al-
most wholly through the conscious selection and
agency of man. It is altogether probable, how-
ever, that a very large part of the modification of
our domestic animals has resulted from a natural
biologic selection rather than from the deliberate
methods and plans of the breeder. An excellent
example of how Nature works (and sometimes con-
trariwise) with man in his breeding operations is
the little Kerry cow or the tiny Shetland pony.
These animals are practically dwarfs, not because
their owners have systematically selected the off-
spring of the smallest mothers, but rather because
of a law that runs true throughout all life. The
law may be stated thus: “Where the food supply
is scanty and uncertain, the size of organisms tends
to decrease.”

In any case, there are on our American farms
today about twenty different breeds of cattle which
are distinguished from each other not only by size,
form, or color markings, but more remarkably by
functions as well, and yet all of them must ac-
knowledge the wild cow of Europe as a common
ancestress.

The larger part of the story of the breeding of
the cow is lost in the unwritten past. Certain it

THE COW TRIBES "3

is that in the days when man was still a nomad
with his herds and long before he had any ad-
vanced civilization or written records or even tra-
ditions of his work, the cow had already been
greatly modified from the wild form and very dis-
tinct breed types had arisen. With all our mod-
ern science and biological theories, we must con-
fess that long ago there were simple-hearted un-
lettered pastoralists who, nevertheless, were con-
structive breeders. Within the last two centuries
a race of English and Scotch farmers, Thomas
Bakewell, the brothers Charles and Robert Colling,
Thomas Bates, Thomas Booth and his sons John
and Richard, and Amos Cruickshank, proved to be
men with a genius for judging and selecting ani-
mals and endowed with a patience and persistency
of purpose which enabled them to accomplish much
in that scientific art where haste counts for noth-
ing. The first and perhaps the greatest of this
line of breeders was Bakewell (1725-1795). He
pursued the improvement of cattle, horses, sheep
and swine with vast enthusiasm and with a success
that in his own lifetime was recognized throughout
England. He seems to have possessed an almost
uncanny skill in his selection of animals for mat-
ing, and he boldly practiced and attributed much
of his success to his use of the principles of close
inbreeding in order to fix desirable characters.
After all, however, there is hardly a breed of
cattle today that represents the deliberate crea-

U4 THE COW

tion of any man or group of men. Our modern con-
tribution has been in the improvement of types
already established and in the keeping of exact
records of ancestry and production through the
various registry associations and herd-books. As
elsewhere in our agriculture, we have only builded
on the foundations laid by forgotten men.

It has sometimes been held as a reproach to our
new world agriculture that we have originated
and developed very few distinctively American
breeds of domestic animals. This statement is not
true regarding swine, for our most popular breeds,
as Duroc-Jersey, Poland-China, Chester-White,
Cheshire, and others, are strictly of American
origin. Also the light fast type of harness horse
is largely an American product. On the other
hand, all of our many breeds of sheep are old
European strains unless we assume that the fine-
wooled sheep, the Merino, has been so modified
under American conditions that it deserves to be
ranked as a native breed. Every breed of cattle,
with the exception of the little known French-
Canadian and two or three very unimportant
polled types of older breeds, are of European
origin. :

As a matter of fact, the very many diverse fami-
lies of cattle in Europe represent not so much a
definite conscious effort to build up a strain ac-
cording to certain preconceived ideals and stand-
ards, but rather they stand for races that have

V. ALERT.—The old plank bridge in the Hillside Farm pasture.

THE COW TRIBES 45

been developed within limited geographical ranges
largely because there has been so little communi-
cation between different sections. It has been said
that almost every English shire had its own pe-
culiar breed. This could never have occurred in
America where there is a great inter-state cattle
trade which insures a very general distribution
and exchange of breed types over the entire coun-
try.

There is nothing occult or mysterious about the
establishment of a brand new breed of any of our
domestic animals. Some one may have in mind
certain functions or form or more likely merely
fanciful characters or color not possessed by any
breed and which he thinks are worth perpetuating.
Probably he will own or have in mind certain in-
dividuals that approximate the desired type. Our
farm animals are rather plastic anyway, much
more so than the wild forms. A few generations
of careful selection and mating together with the
culling out of those specimens that fail to be in
line with the desired forms, will suffice to give
them a certain uniformity and fixity of type. He
may then interest some other men in the same proj-
ect, incorporate as an association or club, adopt
a set of rules and standards, appoint a secretary
to be the official recorder of data relative to pedi-
grees and other matters, begin the publication of a
herd-book, and a new breed is launched on the
world. If in addition to this, those interested can

%6 THE COW

promote the sale of their animals at substantial
prices, the success of the new venture is assured.
Such fiat breed creation is occasionally pursued
among our farm animals and very frequently in
the case of poultry. It must be said that such
efforts serve no useful practice and should be dis-
couraged. We have now all the types of farm
animals that can be of any real use. A consider-
able proportion of those we already have exist
mainly for the purpose of winning premiums at
fairs and selling stock to those misguided agricul-
turists who continually seek some new thing. It
will certainly be wiser to spend time and energy
on further improvement of our standard types
rather than to seek to add to their number.

It is rather interesting and surprising to note
that as far as the exact recording and registry of
pedigrees is concerned, the systematic improve-
ment of the beef breeds considerably antedates
that of dairy cattle. The oldest live-stock registry
in the world is the Shorthorn herd-book, the first
volume being published by George Coats of York-
shire, England, in 1822, and authentic private rec-
ords of Shorthorn pedigree date back as far as
1750. If exact geneological records extending
across many generations are the test, some families
of Shorthorns are the aristocrats of the bovine
world because the herd-books of the other breeds
were founded much later. The first Hereford herd-
book goes back to 1846. The oldest American live-

THE COW TRIBES rad

stock registry is the Ayrshire record established
in New England in 1863. The Jersey and Hol-
stein records were begun about 1872 and the
Guernsey in 1877. The herd-books of the minor
breeds are of still more recent origin. The whole
usefulness of the system of pedigrees and regis-
tration depends on records rigorously supervised
and honestly kept and which are correct to the
best of human ability. In the end, the whole sys-
tem rests on the conscientious honesty of the indi-
vidual breeder. The temptations and opportuni-
ties to substitute and to falsify records in various
ways are great and detection is well-nigh impos-
sible. Occasional scandals have been brought to
light, but, on the whole, the number is few and
the associations have dealt severely with the
guilty. There is no reason to question the essen-
tial correctness of our live-stock records.

The breeds of cattle are usually classified into
three groups: the special beef kinds, the special
dairy breeds, and the general or dual-purpose sorts.
The theory regarding the last is that they will give
fairly profitable returns as dairy animals, and in
addition their male calves will make good feeding
steers, while they themselves will make a fair car-
cass of beef when their dairy days are over. The
best comment on this theory is that not one of the
so-called general-purpose breeds has ever won any
wide popularity. Probably the nearest approach
is in certain strains of milking Shorthorns.

78 THE COW

Of our nearly twenty breeds, only eight can be
regarded as important so far as numbers are con-
cerned. The four beef breeds that really compete
for supremacy in the corn-belt country and that
furnish the T-bone steak and prime ribs of beef
for a hungry world are the Shorthorn, Hereford,
Aberdeen-Angus and Galloway. There are four
great special-purpose dairy breeds, all widely
known and possessing individuals of the highest
excellence. These are the Holstein, Jersey, Guern-
sey and Ayrshire.

The Holstein, coming from Holland, is pre-
eminently the great milk breed, her particular
characteristic being the ability to give large
amounts of milk containing a rather low percen-
tage of butter-fat. Under the conditions and basis
of payment that prevails in the liquid milk market,
this big black-and-white cow threatens to drive
other breeds from the field. She has, on the whole,
remained especially the cow of the practical work-
ing farmer rather than the rich man’s hobby. She
has large size, vigor, hardiness and ability to
utilize profitably great quantities of rough forage;
and while her milk may lack the percentage of fat
suitable for the most discriminating markets, she
is all in all the most popular breed in the world.
Perhaps we may paraphrase the famous expression
regarding the Concord grape and say that she is
the cow for the millions.

It is remarkable that a tiny group of islands in

THE COW TRIBES 49

the English Channel should have given to the
world two of its most widely known races of cattle.
It is said that for centuries no foreign cattle have
been imported to these islands and this natural
isolation for a great period of time has resulted in
two breeds, the Jersey and the Guernsey, which
are of a very distinct type. They are alike in that
both give milk containing an unusually high per-
centage of butter-fat and, especially in the case of
the Guernsey, with an abundance of yellow coloring
matter (lactochrome),but in conformation and gen-
eral appearance the two breeds are not closely akin.

The Ayrshires from southwest Scotland, Robert
Burns’ country, are in character, size and quality of
milk intermediate between the Holstein and the
Channel Island breeds. They have been distrib-
uted over almost the whole dairy world and have
never lacked for warm admirers. The breed has
some individuals that are excellent examples of
dairy conformation, and they are renowned for
their perfectly shaped udders; yet they seem never
to have attained as wide popularity as the other
breeds. Possibly this may be because they are
a little on the order of general-purpose dairy
cattle. It is sometimes stated that no other cow
will give as good returns from the grazing of steep
and rocky pastures. The Ayrshire has been es-
pecially popular in the cheese districts of Jeffer-
son and St. Lawrence counties in New York.

A true breeder of beef cattle will not be in-

80 THE COW

terested in their dairy qualities beyond the point
of insuring that the dam will give enough milk
to rear a good calf by suckling. The conformation
and temperament which give a heavy loin and a
meaty thigh, together with early maturity and the
tendency to accumulate body fat, is directly an-
tagonistic to great dairy performance. The story
comes down to us how Booth, the great Shorthorn
breeder, developed a strain of cows in which the
milk-making function was almost lost, and in his
stables a calf stood between two cows because one
could not properly support her calf. When he was
an old man and showing visitors through his
stables, it was his pleasure to walk down the long
alleys behind those great mountains of flesh and
slapping their broad rumps cry, “Gentlemen:
What does a few quarts of milk from a cow amount
to anyway?”

A man’s success or failure as a dairyman em-
phatically does not depend on his choice of a breed,
assuming, of course, that he chooses one of the
special dairy kinds. The different individuals of
a breed differ far more from each other than do
the breeds as a whole. It is not too much to say
that the breed is relatively unimportant as com-
pared with markets, soils, rations and stable care.
It is of supreme importance, however, that he have
good individuals of some breed, and possibly even
more, that he believe in and love his business and
be a student of it.

THE COW TRIBES 81

Nevertheless, it is possible to lay down certain
principles that may be useful in helping one to
make a choice of some breed to which to devote
one’s energies. If a man is producing market milk
under the usual commercial conditions and basis of
payment, particularly if it be a market which buys
on the basis of moderate costs rather than the high
quality of the product, then the black-and-white
Holstein will probably be best suited for his pur-
pose, especially if his farm is fairly level and fertile
and his pastures not too scanty. The Holstein
cow was developed on the best pastures in the
world where “when she wanted a bite of grass, she
got a whole mouthful.” When it comes to climb-
ing steep and rocky hillsides and wandering far
to crop a lean herbage, the Holstein is handicapped
as compared with the lighter and more active
breeds.

On the other hand, for the economical produc-
tion of butter-fat rather than fluid milk or for the
supplying of a discriminating market milk trade,
one of the Channel Island breeds will probably
be a wiser choice.

The Ayrshire must not be forgotten in this list.
In her adaptability she really falls midway be-
tween the other two classes. Wherever the Scotch-
man has gone into the far corners of the earth, he
has taken his cow, and at her best she is worthy of
the race that created her.

VIII
THE REARING OF THE CALF

As A rule, it will be best if the calf can be born
in the autumn, September or October. There are
sound reasons of good dairy management why this
is usually best. For one thing, it brings the largest
production of milk during the winter months when
prices are much higher than in summer. This
plan also allows the cows to stand dry and hence
to need very little attention during the stress of
midsummer farm activities, no small consideration
as every dairyman knows. Then again the fall-
born calf is likely to receive better care and at-
tention and to make a more satisfactory growth.
The spring calf, even with the best of intentions
on the part of the owner, is too likely at times to
be neglected in the rush of soil preparation and
haying and harvest. The greatest enemy to thrift
in a calf is not fairly low winter temperatures, but
rather the flies and heat of July and August.

If the weather is warm and dry, there is no bet-
ter place for the calf to be born than on a clean
grassy pasture. Usually the other members of the

herd will display very little interest in the event.
82

THE REARING OF THE CALF 83

During much of the year, however, a roomy well-
bedded box-stall should be provided. The period
of gestation in cows is about 285 days, but a varia-
tion of two weeks in either direction is not un-
common. Just a day or two preceding parturi-
tion, certain marked physical evidences appear
which enable one accustomed to observe cows to
know that calving is about to occur. The most
marked of these is the relaxation of the pelvic
ligaments and the abundant secretion of milk in
the udder. Twelve or twenty-four hours pre-
viously, the teats will fill with milk to such an ex-
tent as to become somewhat firm and rigid and the
coming of the calf will then not be long delayed.
Rather close watch should now be kept in order to
be prepared to render assistance in the occasional
cases in which it is needed. Ordinarily, however,
the youngster comes into the world with very little
trouble, and if the mother lives up to the customs
of her race she has within an hour very thoroughly
cleaned her baby with her tongue (the bovine
equivalent of a bath), it has taken its first meal
from her full udder and curled up and gone to
sleep. Maternity among cows seems to be a pass-
ing incident rather than a great event.

In the typical scheme of beef production, there
is really no such problem as rearing the calf. It
is merely allowed to remain with its mother and
she brings it up strictly according to ancestral
training and generally avoids all trouble of indi-

84 THE COW

gestion or other ills. But under the approved
management of the modern dairy herd, all this is
changed. The calf is torn from its mother for:
ever when only twenty-four or forty-eight hours
old, is taught to drink its milk out of a tin pail
instead of nursing from its mother’s udder, and
after a few weeks at longest it is fed skim-milk
instead of the rich creamy fluid that its dam
secrete. It is no wonder that indigestion is some-
times a veritable scourge among young calves.
The real marvel is that they do not all die. We
do incredible violence to every principle of calf
hygiene. Nature provided that the food for the
calf must be very slowly drawn from the mother
and abundantly mixed with saliva in the course
of suckling. Moreover, it was always at exactly
the correct temperature and measured up to the
highest standards of bacteriological cleanliness,
and was taken in small quantities many times a
day. We cause the calf to dump a twelve-hour
supply of milk into its stomach at one time in a
few big gulps, and, moreover, the temperature is
generally too low. Very frequently the feeding
pail is seeded with every imaginable variety of
germs. In addition to all this, we feed too much.
The calf will thrive better if it is never allowed
to stuff itself to repletion, if it is fed only enough
milk so that it is still a little hungry and eager for
more. Perhaps the nursing calf may be allowed

THE REARING OF THE CALF 85

to gorge itself with all the milk it can hold, but
this means disaster when artificially reared.

The gospel of calf feeding may be stated in this
way: Feed moderate quantities of milk at frequent
intervals at about blood heat and out of a clean
and scalded pail. Probably the ideal would be to
feed a teacup full of milk a dozen times a day,
but three or perhaps four times is about the limit
under the conditions of practical dairy manage-
ment. The amount that may be safely fed will
vary through wide limits according to the size and
vigor of the calf, but for the first week from two
to four quarts a day will be enough. For the first
ten days or two weeks of the youngster’s life it
should be fed whole milk, that is unskimmed milk,
fresh from its mother or some other cow. The
more vigorous and hearty the calf, the sooner we
may begin to substitute some skim-milk until at
three to five weeks old it will receive skim-milk
only.

After the calf is a few days old, it should have
before it a little lock of bright early cut hay, pref-
erably clover or alfalfa, and also a box with a
handful of ground grain. A mixture of equal
parts of wheat middlings and ground oats, to-
gether with ten to fifteen per cent of oil-meal
(ground flax-seed cake) will make an excellent
grain ration. It is surprising how quickly a vigor-
ous calf will begin to nibble a little hay and lick

86 THE COW

at the meal, and at two weeks old we may find her
busily and happily chewing her little cud quite
after the manner of her dam. Once a calf begins
to eat freely of solid food the dangers of indiges-
tion and bowel trouble are largely over. Milk may
then be fed within any reasonable limits that the
supply will permit, and no other food equals it for
rapid growth and for putting an animal into the
best condition. Another matter easily forgotton.
and yet important is to see that there is provided
an abundance of bedding. Calves will not thrive
in a damp and dirty stall.

The autumn-born calf will be ready to go to pas-
ture as soon as the grass is plentiful the next
spring. Some grain and shelter from flies during
the first summer is the ideal, but it may not be
practicable to provide these, especially if we are
dependent on back or outlying pastures.

In the case of pure-bred, high-class animals,
when it is desirable to secure the greatest possible
growth and when economy is a secondary con-
sideration, it may be wisest to barn-feed the calf
for the first year and not depend on pasture. It
must not be forgotten, however, that this is an
expensive system and on most farms we should ex-
pect the calf to get its living to a considerable
extent from pasture. The spring-born calf, how-
ever, would better spend its first summer in the
barn, because if turned to grass when only a few
months old the withdrawal of the milk, together

THE REARING OF THE CALF 87

with the heat and flies, will result in a practical
cessation of growth and possibly permanent in-
jury. There is no period when liberal feeding pays
better than with young animals. One of our agri-
cultural barbarisms that still survives is the idea
that young heifers may properly “rough it”
through the first two years of life. This is a great
mistake, because the first requisite of a good dairy
animal is the ability to utilize large quantities of
food, and we should lay the foundations for a
vigorous digestion by liberal feeding during early
life. In a general way, the grain food for young
animals should be of some bulky nature rather
than of a heavy and concentrated type. Nothing
will be better than the old stand-by, a mixture of
wheat bran and ground oats. Wheat bran is es-
pecially indicated because of the large proportion
of phosphorus and lime which it contains. These
materials are the basis of the bones, and it is very
desirable to encourage skeletonal development in
the young heifer rather than excessive fatness.
If well grown, the heifer may be bred when fif-
teen to eighteen months old. She will then drop
her first calf at two years to twenty-seven months
of age. We are often told that “Nature is a wise
Old Dame” and that she manages everything about
right. Unfortunately when left to herself, she does
not always manage this matter well, because very
frequently the heifer will become a mother alto-
gether too young, when not yet haif grown, the

88 THE COW

result being that she gives but little milk and
will be very late in coming to maturity. At the
same time, it is generally agreed that to defer the
first calf too late is a mistake. The heifer’s busi-
ness in life is to bear calves and yield milk, and
it is well if her development along these lines be-
gins before she is too mature.

IX
THE CARE OF THE MILKING HERD

ScHOOL-Boy debating societies have long
wrestled with the time-honored query as to whether
the pen was mightier than the sword or water more
destructive than fire. So men of more mature
years have debated which was more important, to
have good cows or to have them well cared for.
It is breed versus feed. The obvious reply is that
both must go together if the business of dairying
is to be profitable. Men do not, however, always
act according to this truth. Sometimes we find
herds of excellent breeding where the food supply
and comfort of the animals are neglected. On the
other hand, it is not unusual to find men who are
good caretakers but who forget that no amount of
good food can secure high production from an in-
ferior cow.

The care of cattle may be classified under: (a)
Factors of comfort, such as comfortable stalls,
protection from inclement weather, suitable stable
temperatures, water supply and protection from
insect pests; (b) factors of the food supply; (c)

factors of dairy management.
89

90 THE COW

Good dairymen have always recognized that ease
and comfort and content on the part of the cows
are great factors in profitable milk production.
The ideal would be an individual box-stall, say ten
feet square, for every cow where she might freely
move around or lie stretched out at perfect ease
while she chewed her cud and manufactured milk.
Unfortunately this system occupies barn room so
lavishly and uneconomically and is so inconvenient
and extravagant of bedding if decent cleanliness
is to be maintained, that it is almost never fol-
lowed in large herds as a regular practice. How-
ever, nearly all breeders of pure-bred cows who
are making advanced registry records and wish to
secure the last possible ounce of milk without
counting the cost, find that they attain the maxi-
mum results by giving each cow the freedom of
her separate box-stall. Of course, on every dairy
farm there ought to be a few box-stalls for cows
needing particular attention and especially for
those about to calve.

The cow is probably less sensitive to fairly low
temperatures than we have sometimes been led to
think. Thousands of years ago her ancestors
passed the fairly severe winters of northern Europe
with no shelter other than that afforded by the
forests. As long as she has a dry coat and a dry
bed, she probably prefers a cool rather than a warm
and stuffy stable. Rain worries her not at all until
the cold storms of autumn come on, when she

THE CARE OF THE MILKING HERD 91

should be housed at night or in very unpleasant
weather. .

The old idea of dairymen was that the cow
should be given an opportunity for plenty of exer-
cise around the barnyard throughout the winter.
Today practice has veered to the other extreme,
and it is not uncommon to find cows that are never
released from the stanchion from November to
May. It may be a question for debate as to the
ultimate effect on offspring and constitutional
vigor, but there seems to be no doubt that cattle
will give excellent dairy production under such
close confinement.

Unquestionably, flies and other insect pests are
a very serious drawback to cow comfort during
midsummer and early autumn. They are annoyed
by several species of flies and gnats. It is interest-
ing to note that about the year 1890 the north-
eastern states received a new fly pest never ob-
served until that time. This was christened the
Texas horn-fly, the popular belief being that it was
an importation from that state. It has thriven
marvelously since its introduction and seems to
have displaced or driven out what we very un-
scientifically called the “old-fashioned cow-fly.”

The bot-fly or ox-warble lays its eggs so that they
are taken into the stomach of the cow. Later the
tiny larva burrows through the body of its host,
making a long migration until it establishes itself
beneath the skin of the back where it passes the

92 THE COW

winter, to emerge nearly a year later as a big fat
repulsive grub. Big as they are, they do not seem
to cause cattle any particular annoyance. It may
be added that their life history as worked out by
the entomologists is one of the most marvelous of
Nature’s strange miracles. The bot-fly seems to
be quite local in its distribution. On the home
pastures at Hillside Farm we never find it, but
cattle sent to an outlying pasture two miles away
are sure to return bearing a crop of bots that will
become prominent in late winter.

Occasionally the torment from insect pests be-
comes so maddening that the whole herd will start
on a gallop across the field, each cow carrying her
tail aloft like a banner. These rushes are appar-
ently a desperate effort to leave behind or shake
off their tormentors. Fortunately we are able to
give cows some measure of relief by lightly spray-
ing the body, especially the parts that cannot be
reached by the tail, once each day with some one of
the numerous commercial fly repellents. An ex-
penditure of fifty cents a cow each season for time
and material will do much to mitigate an annoy-
ance that is very costly both in milk and flesh.

Flies disappear after a few sharp frosts, but in
winter their place is taken by two or more species
of lice. These vermin are no respecters of persons
and are sometimes troublesome in the best stables.
They may become so bad as to cause cows to rub
raw and bleeding patches on the skin in the effort

Ar Pasture.—What is so rare as a day in June?”

VI.

THE CARE OF THE MILKING HERD 93

to relieve the intolerable itching and sometimes
may hasten the death of unthrifty and poorly fed
calves. Any number of powders, ointments and
washes are recommended as remedies, and most
of them are efficient if used persistently.

Another factor of comfort is the water supply.
It must be confessed that cattle are in no way fas-
tidious as to their drinking place and often seem
quite as well pleased with a green and stagnant
pool as with a running brook or clear spring.
However, a good water supply in winter is of the
utmost importance. If the supply is a trough in
the barnyard, it should be warmed enough to keep
it free from ice. There are many inexpensive types
of water-tank heaters to choose from. It will, how-
ever, be a sound investment and not an extrava-
gance to provide a system of automatic individual
drinking buckets for the stable. A cow will get
along by drinking a great quantity of water (often
from 70 to 100 pounds a day when on dry feed)
once or twice a day, but when forced to do this she
is doubtless thirsty much of the time, ‘while if she
has it available she will take a sip or a few swal-
lows at very frequent intervals. Milk is about 87
per cent water, and there is no other constituent
that we can provide so cheaply. However, both
statute law and ethics decree that it can be added
only through the cow.

Many volumes have been written concerning the
feeding of animals and the current literature of

94 THE COW

the subject, both in popular periodicals and in re-
search publications, is well-nigh unlimited. There-
fore, a few broad generalizations will be sufficient,
without any attempt at discussion.

Wise feeding of the cow must consider three as-
sociated factors. Food must be abundant, palat-
able, and chosen from such sources and in such
relative amounts that it will supply the different
classes of nutrients in such proportions as will
best minister to the needs of the animals.

This is a simple definition, but to measure up to
its requirements involves practical experience,
technical training and a large proportion of good
cow-sense.

Sometimes we talk very technically and at much
length about the “balanced ration.” What we
mean is a ration which by its chemical composition
and make-up is fitted to supply all the require-
ments of the animal. It is now just about a half-
century since the principles of quantitative chemi-
cal analysis began to be applied to feeding stuffs
and to the animal body, to the milk and also to
the wastes or excreted food residues. Some one
then asked a most simple and natural question,
“Ought there to be any particular relationship be-
tween what we feed an animal and the product
that we expect to derive from the food?” and thus
this discussion was begun and surely has never
been allowed to lapse.

The broad idea of the balanced ration is funda-

THE CARE OF THE MILKING HERD 95

mentally sound, but we make a great mistake when
we try to convert it into a rigid mathematical for-
mula. Successful feeding of the animal is not only
a question of correct relative proportions of pro-
tein, carbohydrates and fat, but also of economy
measured in cost in cents each day. It is more a
question of palatability than of the absolute best
theoretical ration. Animals at different seasons _
and localities have had to adapt themselves to very
wide variations in diet, and fortunately their re-
quirements are rather elastic. Study of tables of
composition and digestibility are suggestive, but
we must not forget the individuality of the animal.
The more we consider this topic of feeding, the
more clearly we come to understand that the best
rations are not compounded in the laboratory but
in the stable. A cow must eat to the very limit
of her digestive powers if she is to do her best
work. She must gorge herself “as full as a tick,”
and she will not do this unless her food fulfills her
ideas of toothsomeness. Rations may be skillfully
compounded, if you will, exactly to conform to the
Wolff-Lehmann or any other standard, but they
must also be compounded with experience and com-
mon sense and a close and sympathetic study of
the likes and dislikes of the cow.

There are two fairly distinct types of dairying,
so far .as management is .concerned—“summer”
and “winter.” The dairying of our fathers was
almost wholly of the former type. It was planned

96 THE COW

to have the cows come fresh in April and May, so
far 9s possible, and to depend almost wholly on
pasture for production. The barn was not re-
garded as a place to make milk; it was merely a
device by which cows were maintained alive until
spring. Until a generation ago this was about the
only dairying known except within the milk-ship-
ping radius of the towns and cities where there
was an insistent demand for milk throughout the
year.

For many years an active educational propa-
ganda has urged the wisdom of producing milk
mainly in the winter rather than the summer
months. In the main the arguments are sound.
Winter prices are substantially higher, and it
brings the larger part of the care of the herd in
the time when the farm labor schedule is a little
less strenuous than at seed-time and harvest.
Doubtless, thoughtful dairymen will more and
more come to consider the period beginning in
autumn as the best dairy months.

There is also the question as to what disposition
shall be made of the milk. The market for milk is
constantly and rapidly broadening and there are
now a surprising number of distinct outlets. These
are market milk (that is, milk to be consumed in
the natural state), butter, cheese, condensed and
evaporated milk, powdered milk, malted milk, ice-
cream, milk in combination with chocolate, and a
number of very special uses such as prepared in-

THE CARE OF THE MILKING HERD 97

fants’ foods and various proprietary milk bever-
ages like koumiss and bulgarzoon. In addition,
there are a large number of commercial chemical
by-products of skim-milk.

Of these uses, market milk and butter are by far
the most important. Milk for cheese-making in-
cludes not only the common American or Cheddar
cheese, but also a very great variety of so-called
“fancy” or “soft” cheeses, such as Philadelphia
Cream, Neufchatel and Roquefort. It is not the
purpose of this little book to attempt any discus-
sion of manufacturing methods.

It is safe to say that in the South and in all sec-
tions of the country with a large urban population,
milk is usually worth more to sell as market milk
than it is for manufacturing purposes. However,
the great dairy districts remote from centers of
population must still depend on the commercial
manufacturing establishments for their markets.
Thus, seven states produce more than one-half of
our total butter.

In considering the question of markets, one point
deserves to be emphasized. It is this: The dairy-
man who can so arrange his business as to retain
the skim-milk on the farm may not get as many
dollars this month or this year, but he will have
the satisfaction of feeling that he can grow calves
and pigs which means the maintenance and up-
building of the dairy herd and the conservation of
soil fertility. This is the factor that must underlie

98 THE COW

a really enduring business. The writer lives in a
dairy locality within two miles of a particularly
advantageous market for liquid milk, and almost
without exception the milk of this entire region
goes to supply New York City. We almost alone
have still held to the old farm custom and con-
tinue to skim the milk at home and to sell only
cream and pork and to raise all our promising
heifer calves. The immediate returns may not be
as large as if we should join the morning proces-
sion of milk rigs, but we believe that the future
justifies our plan.

Sound dairy management is a matter of produc-
tive cows, convenient, sanitary and comfortable
barns and stables, corn-fields and silos and hay
from the grasses or better from the legumes. We
do well to maintain the herd as far as possible
from within our own fence lines, but in addition
we shall probably find it necessary to purchase
moderate quantities of protein concentrates.

If we milk more than ten or fifteen cows, it will
be wise to add the milking machine to our equip-
ment. That it is a most successful saver of human
labor no longer admits of debate. There is the
disadvantage, however, that we do largely lose con-
tact with our cows and the good custom of weigh-
ing milk and keeping records is almost certain to
fall into disuse.

x
THE HEALTH OF THE HERD

Tus little book makes no pretense of being in
any way a treatise on veterinary medicine, but
merely proposes to mention rather than discuss a
few of the most important ailments of our dairy
herds. Many of the diseases of humans have their
almost exact counterpart among bovines. A num-
ber of specific infectious diseases are confined to
cattle and at least one, anthrax, is of peculiar in-
terest, because it is communicable to man, not fre-
quently with fatal results. The five outstanding
troubles that to some extent are always with us
and that we can hardly hope to escape sooner or
later are calf scours, epidemic or contagious abor-
tion, parturient apoplexy or in the language of the
stable “milk fever,” bovine tuberculosis and garget.

The first two are not well understood, and while
the literature of these diseases is most voluminous,
we seem to have no general agreement as to either
the exact cause or the specific preventive measures
to be adopted. Many investigators have come to
think that the two troubles have a common cause

and that a calf may be carried to full term and be
99

100 THE COW

born in apparently good condition and yet perish
rather promptly because of germs from a diseased
mother. Certain it is that from time to time in
our best cared-for herds, scours has proved a veri-
table scourge that neither painstaking attention
nor the best veterinary skill has been able to arrest.
The specific ‘disease is not to be confounded with
the chronic indigestion and diarrhea resulting
from improper feeding and which will ordinarily
be cured by removing the cause.

Contagious abortion is without doubt the most
serious disease of dairy cattle in America. Not
only is there loss of production and frequent un-
thrift and barrenness as a sequel, but in addition
we have the loss of the offspring, which in the
pure-bred herd is the most serious aspect. Noth-
ing is more disheartening than to see calf after
calf born prematurely until perhaps hardly one re-
mains. There is little doubt that it is an infectious
germ disease, but as for its control there is a feel-
ing of discouragement on the part of those who
have had the most experience. One fortunate fact
stands out, that, like many germ infections, it is
self-limiting and one attack confers at least partial
immunity against further ones. Probably it is safe
to say that few herds escape contagious abortion,
especially if there is some buying and selling of
cattle. When a herd has heretofore been free, the
initial attack is likely to be especially virulent.
Usually an aborting cow will retain the fetal

THE HEALTH OF THE HERD 101

Inembranes, and some of the best students of the
question insist that this condition can occur only
as the result of a specific germ. The owner will
find abundant discussion and advice available, and
he may at least rest assured that if he will keep up
his courage, care well for his animals and feed
abundantly, he will gradually gather a herd that is
at least partially immune so that a premature calf
will be the exception instead of the rule. The
writer has had considerable experience as a lay-
man in the effort to control this disease, and he
has no desire to offer specific advice or to combat
any system of treatment.

Milk fever or parturient apoplexy, while a
once dreaded scourge, may now be fairly described
as of mainly historical interest. The simple and
remarkably efficient method for its cure is the one
great outstanding triumph of veterinary medicine.
Until less than a generation ago, the cow just
easily delivered of a calf, more especially if she
was a heavy milker and in the best condition,
would be noticed to stagger, within a few moments
go down, throw her head around against her side,
breathe slowly and noisily, become unconscious
and in the greater number of cases die within
twelve to thirty-six hours. Every dairyman who
had good well-fed cows came to know these symp-
toms only too well. Of course we called the cow
doctor and, according to the rules, he poured down
the unconscious animal purgatives and aconite, but

102 THE COW

we usually buried her next day. It is true that
much could be done by preventative measures. It
was known that milk fever usually attacked cows
that were well fed and fleshy, the precise condition
in which intelligent dairymen try to have their cat-
tle at freshing. We were advised to give her only a
restricted diet for two weeks before calving, but
to maintain a cow in this manner is totally opposed
to all sound tenets of good dairy management.
Due to the great discovery of veterinarians we may
now feed her well, and when the first premonitory
symptoms are noticed the udder is pumped full of
sterilized and filtered air until it is tense and drum-
like and almost invariably within a few hours she
will be apparently as well as ever.

Bovine tuberculosis is by far the most talked-
about of all cattle diseases, owing to the fact that
many well-informed sanitarians believe that it may
be transmitted to the human race as well. The oc-
currence of tuberculosis in cattle has been recog-
nized for many years, but so long as we were de-
pendent on physical examination for its detection,
no real progress toward eradication or control
was possible. The discovery of tuberculin and its
application in various forms to the tuberculin test
has given a simple, inexpensive and on the whole
remarkably accurate diagnostic agent which per-
mits the detection, not only of advanced but of in-
cipient cases as well. If bovine tuberculosis were
confined entirely to the lower animals, it would not

THE HEALTH OF THE HERD 103

attract any very special attention, and it surely:
would not be possible to enlist both state and fed-
eral aid in a far-reaching campaign for its eradica-
tion, in which not only is there supervision of
means of stamping it out, but also provisions
whereby to a great extent the public assumes the
financial burden involved in the destruction of the
infected animals. Whether or not bovine tubercu-
losis is transmissible to man is one of the perennial
battlegrounds of the biologists, but the idea is at
least very widely credited and explains in large
part the peculiar interest which city boards of
health have displayed concerning this disease.
Once well established in a herd, tuberculosis is
very serious from the economic side, apart from
any questions of public hygiene. If the infection
becomes general, there will be the unsatisfactory
evidence of unthrifty calves and young stock and
from time to time an occasional cow will go down
with generalized “T.B.” In any case, the public
and the more progressive breeders are so aroused
over the question that we are rapidly approaching
the time when all purchases of cattle will be condi-
tioned on passing a tuberculin test. Solely from
the standpoint of satisfaction and dairy produc-
tion, no man can afford to keep an infected herd
and if we grant its transmission to man the case
for its eradication becomes infinitely stronger.
Another trouble that is always with us and the
loss from which runs into incalculable sums, sur-

104 THE COW

passing perhaps even epidemic abortion, is garget
and udder injuries of one kind or another. There
may be mechanical injury to the udder cr inflamma-
tion as the result of excessive or improper feeding
or a specific infection may be passed from one cow
to another. The latter type is commonly very
much more severe and often treatment seems of
little avail. As a result, every herd of much size
will have spoiled udders, sometimes only one, some-
times two or more quarters missing. A bad case
of infective garget may lead to the actual loss of a
large part of the udder by sloughing off. In this
case, there will be severe constitutional disturb-
ances with high fever and great loss of flesh. A
good cow with only one teat gone will probably
be worth keeping, but when half of the udder is lost
it will be better to salvage her at the butcher’s
unless she is especially valuable on account of her
offspring. Losses from garget are likely to be
greatest in the best herds, as the cow with an
intensely developed milking tendency seems to be
most liable and also because the high feeding with
concentrated protein grains practiced in the best
stables acts as a predisposing cause. It may be
added that care, patience and prompt use of some
simple treatments will go far to minimize the
losses.

The American dairyman is very fortunate in
not having to reckon with some very serious cattle
plagues which are found in Europe and other parts

THE HEALTH OF THE HERD 103

of the world. Among these are pleuro-pneumonia,
foot-and-mouth disease and rinderpest. The two
former have at times attained a foothold on our
shores but by a vigorous system of quarantine and
the destruction of all infected and exposed animals
they have been absolutely stamped out, the result-
ing saving to American live-stock interests being
beyond all calculation. Some of these temporary
invasions have cost large sums, have involved the
enforced slaughter of some very valuable herds of
pure-bred cows, have entailed private financial
hardship -and have aroused most bitter animosity
against the authority charged with the enforce-
ment of the control measure; and yet the some-
what violent means adopted have been justified a
thousandfold. Several times within a generation
foot-and-mouth disease has thus been extinguished.
It is a testimony to what can be accomplished by
trained animal sanitarians armed with power, but
it is perhaps too much to hope that like results
can be attained with maladies like abortion and
tuberculosis where the symptoms are slow in de-
velopment and may lie long concealed.

No man will go very far in the business of dairy-
ing without suffering losses from disease. He may
not have many mature animals die, but calf scours,
abortion and garget will always be present and
sometimes will take their toll. Nor need he feel,
therefore, that he has been ignorant or careless in
his management. Undoubtedly more intensive

106 THE COW

feeding, closer housing and a congested cow popu-
lation has tended toward the increase of bovine
disease. As an offset to this is the far more intel-
ligent and rational treatment than in the old days.
Some loss is a part of the dairy business, but skill
in feeding and care and the eradication of the
feeble and diseased animals will be the best meas-
ures to minimize these losses.

XI

THE DEPRECIATION AND THE RENEWAL
OF THE DAIRY HERD

DariryInc would be a much less complex and
exacting business if it were not for the constant
necessity of replacing the cows which for one
reason or another drop out of the herd. This shift
and change in the make-up of the working herd is
much greater than one would expect until one
considers the various factors involved.

The cow is fairly long-lived, although not equal-
ing the horse in this respect. Many cows are still
useful at thirteen to fifteen years of age. The
records of registry associations show that an oc-
casional individual is still bearing young and
milking up to twenty or more years. The bovine
wonder of the world so far as age is concerned was
the cow Old Grannie recorded as No. 1 in the
Aberdeen-Angus herd-book. She is credited with
dropping twenty-five calves, the last one in her
twenty-ninth year and finally dying at the (for
cows) ripe old age of thirty-six. Probably if it
were desirable to retain cows to extreme age, many

would reach a quarter of a century. Nevertheless,
107

108 THE COW

rather careful studies in New York and Minnesota
covering some thousands of cows indicate that the
average individual reaches an age of only between
eight and nine years. This figure does not mean
that cows die at this average age but rather it
represents the age at which they are removed from
the herd. Low-grade beef rather than natural
death is the fate of most cows. Inasmuch as a
cow must be at least two years old before she
“comes in,” her actual period of usefulness does
not average more than seven years. It also means
that for each seven cows in the herd it will be
necessary each year to raise at least one calf to
take their place. There is really a rather rapid
shift of our bovine population.

It should be remembered that these estimates
are the average for a large number of dairies, but
it does not follow that the same will be true on
any particular farm. The number of cows re-
moved from the herd will vary widely with cir-
cumstances and with the policy pursued, but in
general the more active and enterprising owners
will have the largest “turn-over”’ of cows because
they will be more energetic and persistent in
culling out undesirable individuals and will not
wait until a cow reaches extreme age before dis-
posing of her.

There are a number of reasons why some 14 per
cent of our dairy cows must be replaced each year.
Disease and accident always take their toll, but

DEPRECIATION OF THE DAIRY HERD 109

this is not the most important factor. It has been
shown by investigations covering several thousand
cows that the actual annual loss by death was only
1.2 per cent, and these figures were the same in
New York and Minnesota.

Mechanical injury to the teats and udder, such
as having a teat crushed in the stable by the foot
of another cow or tearing the udder on a barbed
wire fence, occasionally leads to the loss of a teat.
Infective garget is a much more serious trouble,
nearly always leading to the entire loss of the
quarters affected. In either case, the dairy use-
fulness of the animal is diminished and results in
its disposal for beef.

Failure to breed or barrenness is very common
and of course renders the cow valueless except for
slaughter.

Probably the largest single cause is poor pro-
duction, the animal being turned to the butcher
because she fails to give milk enough to justify her
existence. It may be added that even more cows
ought to be eliminated for this same reason. We
cannot well over-emphasize the slogan that the
path of the unproductive cow ought to lead
straight to the butcher’s block.

Finally, there is the question of wearing out
through old age. A cow really fails largely because
her teeth become poor and she is handicapped in
gathering her food at pasture and to a less degree
in the stable. The teeth of a horse continue to

110 THE COW

grow throughout life and the older they are, the
longer and more protruding they become. Cows
have front teeth on the lower jaw only and these
frequently drop out and in other cases are worn
off to the very roots. It is perhaps not far wrong
to-say that a cow is no older than her teeth. In
purchasing a cow of somewhat doubtful age, an
examination of the mouth is the first necessity.

The depletion of the herd by death and accidents
and the necessary eliminations for other reasons
constitutes an “overhead” charge which is some-
times forgotten but which is really a most serious
economic factor. The ultimate end of the cows
that prove to be failures as producers or that meet
with some accident or disability is slaughter.
Dairy-cow beef is so low in price that the value of
a worn-out or disabled animal is commonly only
from one-third to one-half of her price if sound.
Considering all this, it seems certain that in cal-
culating the balance sheet of a dairy business, it
will be necessary under the best management to
“charge off” each year at least 10 per cent exclusive
of the salvage value of the animals disposed of, a
depreciation charge much higher than obtains in
some other types of agriculture. If this estimate
is wide of the mark, it is at fault in being too low
rather than too high.

Broadly speaking, there are two methods of
maintaining the numbers of the herd. One is
merely to purchase animals to replace the fallen

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DEPRECIATION OF THE DAIRY HERD 111

from time to time as the necessity arises. The
dairyman who is selling liquid milk and who,
therefore, has no skim-milk available will often,
perhaps usually, find this the wisest plan. This is
especially true if he is located on high-priced land
and has no rough outlying areas where heifers and
dry stock may be cheaply pastured. It is emphati-
cally true, however, that the purchase plan is by
no means ideal. The buyer will always be asked to
accept animals which are really the rejects and
discards of other men. Also, he can never escape
the danger of buying tuberculosis and epidemic
abortion together with its sequel, barrenness. He
stands more than a fair chance of acquiring hard
milkers and kickers and fence jumpers. He will
abundantly exemplify the ancient maxim of the
law, “Let the buyer beware.” As an offset to these
disadvantages is the fact that to rear a calf on
whole milk and purchased foods and pasture it on
high-priced lands will almost always cost more
than to purchase a fresh cow in the markets. The
only reason why the dairyman so situated should
raise a calf is the expectation that it will make a
better cow than he can buy.

In the vicinity of cities are numerous examples
of what might be called “high pressure” dairying,
the cows being bought when new-milch, heavily
fed and milked and then as soon as they begin to
take on flesh and diminish in milk yield, they are
sold for beef and a fresh cow installed in their

112 THE COW

place. This plan involves a certain loss as between
the cost and selling price of every cow handled but,
on the other hand, it does away with the charge
involved in feeding and caring for calves and heifer
and dry cows.

But after all, for most of us, the true pleasure
and satisfaction of dairying comes through the
plan of maintaining the herd by calves born and
reared on the farm. The dairyman who, like the
writer, sells cream or who makes butter or ice-
cream and hence has available an abundance of
skim-milk, should by all means expect to raise all
the promising heifer calves. This will of course
give him more cows than he requires to replenish
his herd, but there are two marked and distinct
advantages. There is always an eager market at
increasing prices for well-bred and well reared
grade young stock and these, while in a way a sort
of by-product of the business, may constitute a very
important addition to the farm revenue. There is
also the further advantage that, having a large
number of young cows to select from, he may cull
his herd more closely, retaining only the most de-
sirable individuals and thus raising the general
average of production. It ought to be written in
capital letters that the most important single fac-
tor in profitable dairying is not breed, feed, meth-
ods or stable care, but efficient cows. This, to bor-
row a phrase from Thomas Carlyle, is the “one
thing altogether indispensable.” Even the most

DEPRECIATION OF THE DAIRY HERD 113

careful breeding does not secure continuous prog-
ress and one of the most disheartening facts is that
not infrequently the offspring is inferior to the
dam. The man who has heifers of his own breeding
in considerable numbers stands the best chance of
maintaining a high average excellency.

It has been noted in an earlier chapter that suc-
cess or failure in dairying does not depend on the
selection of any particular breed. Both experience
and theory indicate that real constructive dairy
improvement must come through the use of pure-
bred sires and that, having chosen one breed, a
stockman must stick to it consecutively through
the years. He will soon have a herd of grades, the
first cross being commonly stated as one-half
pure-bred, the next one as three-fourths pure-bred,
and so on. Four or five successive crosses with
males of the same breed rapidly reduce the pro-
portion of native blood to an insignificant fraction
and will result in a herd which in color, size, gen-
eral appearance and real dairy usefulness will be
the equivalent of a registered herd, the main dif-
ference being that they can never have their names
written in any herd-book nor can they be sold at
prices approaching that of registered stock.

It may be asked whether there is any funda-
mental reason other than sentiment for the use
of the pure-bred sire rather than the mongrel, that
is, the animal of mixed or promiscuous breeding.
The whole value of a sire depends on his ability

114 THE COW

to transmit his characters to his offspring. To
this power the biologist gives the name “pre-
potency.” This power or ability varies greatly in
different individuals and the history of breeding
is really a chronicle of the influence of certain
famous sires who have been prepotent to an un-
usual degree. It would be easy to multiply classi-
cal examples of this fact. There is the Jersey bull,
Stoke Pogis 3d, sacrificed for beef while still young
before his value was realized, yet it is said that
every daughter of his that ever was tested made a
record that would have entitled her to admission
to the Jersey Register of Merit. There is the
stallion Hambletonian 10 who, during a period of
twenty-one years, was the progenitor of 1287 foals,
a large percentage of which were notably fast.
This was true not only of Hambletonian himself
but of his sons as well, so that by common consent
he stands unapproached as the foremost horse in
the history of the American trotter.

It is this mysterious quality of prepotency that
above everything else is to be desired in the sire.
Unfortunately not every pure-bred animal pos-
sesses it, but there is abundant evidence to show
that the animal which for a long period has been
bred within certain blood lines without admixture
of diverse strains is more likely to be prepotent.
On the other hand, the cross-bred or native or
mongrel may be and frequently is of excellent in-
dividuality, but they are surely much less likely

DEPRECIATION OF THE DAIRY HERD 115

to be able to transmit these good qualities to their
offspring. .

Not every dairyman need expect to become a
breeder of registered cattle. Indeed, after many
years of agitation and propaganda, less than 2 per
cent of the dairy cows of the eastern United States
are pure-bred. However, every dairyman who ex-
pects to rear calves to replenish his herd ought
either to own or else pay the service fee of a good
pure-bred sire. While a certain rather small per-
‘ eentage of bull calves of fashionable breeding and
born of dams who have been admitted to “Advanced
Registry,” that is, dams whose high production has
been officially demonstrated and certified, sell at
high prices, plenty of calves of excellent breeding,
especially when owned by the less widely known
breeders, can be purchased at prices quite within
the reach of any dairyman.

XII
THE JUDGING OF COWS

A VERY eminent teacher of animal industry has
said that he could learn more about a cow by
weighing her milk for a week and testing it with
the Babcock test than he could by a life-long ex-
amination of her according to any scale of points—
a conclusion in which any good dairyman will
heartily concur. But on the other hand, we may
not always be able to weigh and test her milk and,
moreover, there are certain accepted standards of
beauty and form in cattle, certain requirements as
to individuality insisted on in the show-ring and
the sales pavilion. No matter how much attention
is paid to official testing, we shall never cease to
exhibit cattle for prizes at the fairs and always
our agricultural college boys will continue to or-
ganize judging teams to compete in the art of
placing animals according to certain agreed stand-
ards of form, color, carriage, qualities of udder
and skin and hoof and horn. This judging and
scoring of animals is a fine art and one that de-
serves to be encouraged by lovers of good live-stock

and by our teachers of animal husbandry. It is
116

THE JUDGING OF COWS 117

true that the price at which dairy cows sell depends
largely on their Advanced Registry certificate, ‘.e.,
the officially certified records as to their ability to
produce pounds of milk and butter-fat. It is also
true, however, that really high prices will never
be paid for cows that carry misshapen udders and
sloping rumps and winged shoulders. In other
words, men who love cattle demand not only ability
to give high production but good individuality as
well.

There are two different ideals in judging cattle.
Unfortunately, almost every breed at some period
of its development has suffered because the men
setting breed fashions have followed some per-
sonal fancy or fad or character which had no par-
ticular connection with usefulness, dairy efficiency
or beauty. For example, not so long ago Jersey
breeders laid great stress on the importance of
solid color together with a black switch and tongue
characters that can have no possible relation to
dairy temperament or capacity. Judging cattle
according to merely fanciful standards or points
that have no bearing on the question of production
is very superficial. Fortunately, on the whole,
there is less of this judging than there was at an
earlier period of the pure-bred business.

On the other hand, as representing the seasoned
experience and observation of many handlers and
students of dairy cows, there has come a substan-
tial agreement concerning certain external charac-

118 THE COW

ters to be determined not only by the eye but quite
as much by the touch, which are the usual (but
by no means invariable) indications of dairy tem-
perament and capacity.

Every breed association has adopted its own
official score-card or scale of points. These will
vary one from the other in minor questions of
coloration, shape of horns, quality of coat and
other non-essentials, but in fundamentals they are
very much alike, showing that the scoring of cattle
is more than a mere empirical art. The score-card
is very useful to the student or judge because it
brings the various qualities of the animal to his
attention in an orderly and systematic sequence.
The reader will find it very interesting to study
the official scale of points of any of the dairy cattle
registry associations or the card prepared for the
use of students by our animal husbandry teachers
in the agricultural colleges, but these occupy too
much space to be reproduced here. It will be
noted that there has grown up a fairly large half-
technical half-slangy vocabulary of the judging
ring.

In judging dairy cattle, one point universally
emphasized is that the cow (and to a less extent
the bull or calf) should show the wedge shape or,
as it is sometimes put, the “double wedge form.”
This means that the hind quarters, or more strictly
the pelvic arch, should be relatively broader and
more massive than the chest. This conception may

THE JUDGING OF COWS 119

be visualized thus: If imaginary lines are drawn
from the extreme outside points of the hip-bones to
the outside points of the shoulders and then con-
tinued forward, they should meet at a point some
little distance in front. The same is true of lines
along the spine and belly, although it will be under-
stood that this can hardly be demonstrated with
the exactness of a problem in Euclid. Let it be
said, however, in the most emphatic manner that
a good cow is wedge-shaped not because she is
narrow in front but because she is broad behind.
The distinction is most fundamental. If the wedge
shape is secured only at the expense of a restricted
heart and lung cavity, it is all wrong. A roomy,
wide-spread pelvis is necessary to shelter the or-
gans of reproduction and to give easy room for
the attachment of a capacious udder. This udder
cannot be easily swung if the cow has thighs like
a beef steer, hence we look for “cat hams” and an
animal “high in the twist.”

Most score-cards ask for a cow with a back “level
from the point of the withers to the setting on
of the tail-head,” or similar phrasing. This means
that a sloping rump is not desirable. This is per-
haps a rather “fancy” point but a sloping rump is
very often correlated with an udder hung too far
forward and with poor rear udder development.

A cow “down in the back” or “sway-backed” is
undesirable from the viewpoint of beauty or sym-
metry and it is always preferable to have the back

120 THE COW

level; yet it must be admitted that this particular
fault seems to be very common in cows of marked
excellence. There may be a special reason for this
because a great abdomen and a heavy udder, both
so necessary for a good cow, tend to put a down-
ward curve in the spine, especially with advancing
years. In this case the popular “good top line”
and real dairy performance may be to some ex-
tent antagonistic.

The ribs should be well sprung, giving a barrel-
shaped chest and enormous abdomen, because if a
cow is really to be a high producer she must first
of all have a great stomach that can hold and digest
large amounts of bulky food. This reminds one
of Napoleon’s famous dictum regarding the com-
mon soldier, “Away with brains. Give me guts.”

The withers should be rather thin and sharp, the
very opposite of the beef type. Heavy withers are
usually correlated with a thick hard hide, a heavy
tail and a generally beefy conformation. The
vertebre should be large and prominent to the
touch, showing mainly that they are not padded
and covered with fatty tissue. Stripped of their
flesh, the skeletons of the milch cow and the typical
beef cow can hardly be distinguished by the best
trained anatomist, but the dairy cow is more in-
clined to be “raw-boned” because she puts her fat
in the pail instead of using it to upholster her
framework. é

We must shun the hard, thick, inelastic hide, for

THE JUDGING OF COWS 121

there is no worse indication. The skin need not
be especially thin but it must be “mellow” to the
touch, elastic and loose, so that behind the shoul-
ders one may pick up a handful of it. This quality
of being a “good handler” has always been a much
esteemed character and the word was used by
writers more than a century ago. Some judges
place much emphasis on the color and abundance
of the “secretions,” meaning thereby the oily mat-
ter in the skin, the waxy material within the ear
and the yellow dandruff at the roots of the long
hairs in the tail. Most cows who give even small
amounts of very rich milk are likely to exhibit
these indications in a marked degree. Desirable
characters are a bright, active, prominent eye, a
lively ear, a great broad muzzle and powerful jaw,
a horn not too heavy, and always an air of supple
slenderness which we call feminine as opposed to
the rugged masculinity of the bull.

There remains the udder, to which more points
are given and on which more stress is laid than on
any other one feature. It must be acknowledged
that some cows which are excellent dairy animals
from the standpoint of production nevertheless
carry miserably misshapen udders, but this is their
misfortune. A beautiful symmetrical udder is a
point worth striving after. It should be “square,”
with the four teats wide apart but not “strutting.”
It should be attached far up between the thighs
behind and yet be carried far forward under the

122 THE COW

belly also. It should be “buttoned up close” to
the abdomen and not swinging or pendulous, else
it will chafe and be more liable to mechanical
injury. It should be soft and very elastic, covered
with silky hair and should fall into loose folds of
skin when empty.

The milk veins have perhaps received undue
attention, many holding that these are the one
unmistakable sign of a good cow. We like to see
them long and crooked and if possible divided into
two or three branches, entering the abdomen
through as many different holes or “milk wells.”
It is at least a reasonable assumption that the size
of these veins is a measure of the circulatory ac-
tivity of the udder and if so they should be a sort
of measure of dairy capacity. They may be traced
out on a very much smaller scale in bulls also and
in this case are given considerable value. Some
poor cows have prominent milk veins, but most
inferior ones do not, and nearly all animals of
unusual capacity will exhibit marked development
in this regard.

The question may be fairly asked: “How much
connection is there between conformation and per-
formance and to what extent are these supposed
indications of dairy excellence really borne out by
the hard test of the milk scales and the Babcock
bottle?” The writer has been intimately associ-
ated with the care of a herd for many years. He
has done some buying and selling and some show-

THE JUDGING OF COWS 123

ring judging and has tried to determine how far
there is a real relation between a cow’s conforma-
tion and her ability to produce. His conclusions
are as follows: Some cows, too many, in fact, pos-
sess every external character that is supposed to
indicate the superior dairy animal and yet seem
unable to “deliver the goods.” They are calculated
to deceive the very elect. Something they lack, be
it constitution or vigor or pep or whatever term
you choose to employ. On the other hand, he has
yet to see the cow of beefy build, hard, thick inelas-
tic hide, heavy hams, thick withers, bull-headed,
with a tucked up little udder and small, inconspic-
uous milk veins buried in tissue that by any
stretch of courtesy can be called a superior dairy
animal. Emphatically, dairy indications are more
than skin deep. We hold to the ecclesiastical doc-
trine that “there are outward signs of inward
grace.”

XIII
THE DAIRY FARMSTEAD

In the business of dairying three principal fac-
tors and items of investment are to be considered,
—the land, the barns and the herd.

So far as the land is concerned, it has already
been noted that dairying is commonly a hill-
country business. Of course this does not mean
that cow-keeping is restricted to this type of
country or that the very best land may not be
employed profitably in dairying. It indicates that
much land too rough and hilly to be well adapted
to the production of staple cash crops may be very
well utilized in dairying and hence that industry
has largely gone to the rougher and cheaper areas.
On the other hand, one must not make the mistake
of concluding that the cow is adapted to very poor
land. She can make good use of steep and rocky
pastures if they are reasonably fertile and clothed
with grass, but light, poor, sandy soils, if they are
worth trying to utilize at all, had better be given
over to sheep. Experience in the range country of
the West with a very scanty rainfall shows that

on these lands the beef steer rather than the dairy
124

THE DAIRY FARMSTEAD 125

cow gives the best results. Also the dairy farm
must have something besides rocky pastures.
There must be stretches of meadow and areas
adapted to corn for, as a rule, the man who at-
tempts dairying as his main business without the
aid of the corn plant will be almost hopelessly
handicapped from the beginning. There are cer-
tain exceptions to this general statement. Some
regions are either so far north or else lie so far
above sea-level that the seasons are too short and
eool for this heat-loving plant, and yet our native
grasses are most thoroughly at home. In these
localities, one may find a highly developed dairy
industry without the silo.

It should be borne in mind that the cow can
utilize steep and rocky hillsides to advantage only
in conjunction with corresponding areas of land
that are fairly free of stone and level enough to-
permit the use of modern agricultural machinery.
Fortunately this is just the condition which ob-
tains on many of the farms in the Hill-Country of
the northeastern states.

It is, of course, utterly impossible to lay down
any scheme of crop rotation that will fit all sections
of the country or that will apply to every farm in
any particular locality. Indeed, every farm con-
stitutes a separate problem in farm management.
It is equally impossible to say how many cows
ought to be maintained on a farm of any given size
because this will vary through the very widest

126 THE COW

limits. It may be practicable under skilled and in-
tensive agriculture on the best lands (especially if
far enough south so that some double-cropping
may be practiced) to approximate one cow for each
acre of arable land, although this will imply the
purchase of a large part of the grain food. In most
of the dairy regions of the northeastern United
States, a cow for each three to five acres will be a
much more reliable and conservative estimate.

It is perhaps foolish to specify any farm, real or
imaginary, and lay down a hard and fast system
of rotation and cropping. All schemes of this
character must be more or less elastic. However,
as a sort of working hypothesis, we may imagine a
farm somewhere in the dairy belt containing one
hundred acres of cleared land. We will assume
that fifty acres of this area are too steep and rocky
to be tillable and hence must be used as permanent
pasture. The remaining fifty acres are level and
smooth enough and have sufficient fertility to
make good meadow or to grow corn. How many
dairy cows such a farm will support will depend
very largely on the character and agricultural
condition of the soil and on the skill and energy
of the owner. Nevertheless, there is something
like an average farm and average efficiency in
management and, bearing this in mind, we may
venture to make some estimates as to the produc-
tivity of this farm.

Suppose we see whether this farm is fitted to

THE DAIRY FARMSTEAD 127

provide at least the roughage for twenty milking
cows together with the young stock and necessary
horses. The farm stock will then comprise twenty
cows, a bull, five yearling heifers, five calves and
three or four horses.

The fifty acres of permanent pasture, if it is
fairly good, ought to provide the larger part of
the grazing required during the pasture periods,
which is only a little more than five months.
Later in the season we may supplement the old
pastures by allowing the cows to graze off some
of the aftermath in the meadows. The temptation
will be to overdo this because, while rather hard
on the meadows, it is excellent for the cows.

Corn silage is one of the very best and cheapest
of cow forages and should fill a large place in the
yearly menu. A cow will profitably use. forty
pounds of silage a day and this amount will very
satisfactorily replace ten or twelve pounds of good
hay. This means four tons of silage to a cow for
the 200 days that she must depend mainly on stable
feeding. Some silage should supplement the sum-
mer pastures in dry weather or late in the season,
say a ton to a cow for this purpose, which will
mean that one can feed liberally, if necessary, for
six weeks or two months. It may be said in pass-
ing that a supply of silage for summer is far su-
perior to any scheme of growing green crops to
help out scanty pastures. One would better ar-
range for five tons of silage for each cow and some

128 THE COW

for the heifers and even for the calves. A round
silo thirty feet high and sixteen feet in diameter
if well filled will hold about 120 tons, and this
will be about what is required in our scheme of
dairy management.

A good farmer ought to produce twelve tons of
silage to the acre on the average, so at least ten
acres of corn should be planted. This corn will
always be grown by plowing up ten acres of the
oldest and poorest meadow and it will always be
followed by oats. Our farm rotation map appears
about as follows:

50 acres permanent pasture

10 acres corn

10 acres oats

30 acres hay

The amount of corn required is really the key
to the whole scheme. If a larger proportion of the
farm were tillable, we would have less pasture and
more crops.

The ten acres of oats can hardly be expected to
yield more than 500 bushels and this will be far
above the average of the country, but fortunately
dairy farms generally yield more than average
crops. After we have fed the horses and poultry
and saved oats for seed, there will not be many left
for the cows. In other words, we must expect to
buy most of the grain feed.

The thirty acres of hay (the ten acres of new
seeding being mostly clover) ought to give forty-

THE DAIRY FARMSTEAD 129

five tons of hay. This will be enough for the horses
and cattle, supplemented as it is by silage.

This is a sort of empirical made-on-paper scheme
but it is at least the outline of a cropping system
which is fundamentally sound and which will work
out well in the dairy belt of the northeastern
states. At the same time it may be greatly modi-
fied. If the farm is so fortunate as to lie in the
limestone country where alfalfa is at home, the
area of meadow may be reduced and two crops of
oats may be grown in succession before re-seeding.
If this is done it will double our acreage of oats
and we may expect to have enough to help out con-
siderably in making up the grain ration. Some-
times if hay is scarce, an acre or two of very rich
land sown to millet and cured for hay may take
the place of two or three times that area of ordi-
nary meadow. It may be the wisest plan to follow
the practice of some dairymen who have found that
the easiest way to grow grain is to plant potatoes
and exchange them for mill feed.

In a general way over most of the dairy belt of
the United States, the business is founded on three
great crops, (1) grass and the hay legumes (alfalfa
and the clovers), (2) corn to be harvested mainly
through the silo, (3) and a small-grain crop, oats,
or better, a mixture of oats, barley and peas sown
together.

It must not be forgotten that the largest single
factor in crop production is the weather. There

130 THE COW

ought to be a margin of safety between what the
live-stock requires and what the farm will ordi-
narily produce. The effort to keep all the cattle
that the farm can maintain in ordinarily produc-
tive years will be sure to meet with lean years when
our plans go wrong. It will be well to carry over
from year to year some reserve of hay and not
to keep so much stock that choice timothy hay
cannot be sold, for its sale value is always far
above its feeding worth.

The choice of a farm is exceedingly important
and many factors must be considered. Some of
these are as follows:

The soil: Is it fertile? Has it natural sup-
plies of lime sufficient to make it easy to grow
legumes, especially clovers and alfalfa? Has it
the physical characters that adapt it to the true
grasses? Does it need artificial drainage? Is it
free from large stone so as to permit the use of
modern tillage implements? Is there at least a
part of it where the corn plant will be at home?

Topography: How much of the land is level
enough to permit the use of the tractor and other
heavy implements and to allow inter-cultural til-
lage without washing and denuding? Does it slope
south and east or does it face north and west?
The difference in the two exposures is very impor-
tant. Does the tillable land where we expect to
grow corn enjoy good air drainage so that there
will not be frosty pockets? This may not be vital

‘aUIT} BULY[IU aq WOOS [[IM FI—ONLLIVAMA “IITA

THE DAIRY FARMSTEAD 131

in the South but it is important as we approach
the northern limit of the corn-belt. What is the
position of the buildings? Are there favorable
grades for roads to bring the crops to the barn and,
not less important, return the manure to the fields?
Is the farm cut up with ravines or streams that
will interfere with broad fields and long straight
furrows? Is it possible to reach remote parts of
the farm by direct routes? Is the house and barn
sheltered from winter gales?

Climate: What is the annual rainfall of the
locality? How is it distributed as to the seasons of
the year? What is the date of the last frost in
spring and the first frost in the fall? What is the
mean annual temperature?

Location, markets, transportation: Is the farm
near good permanent stone highways? Is it near,
if possible, very near, the markets where the dairy
products are to be marketed? Is it near the sta-
tion from which feed supplies must be hauled?
Are the market roads level enough so that maxi-
mum loads may be taken?

Water supply: Has the farm a satisfactory
water supply in the pastures as well as at the house
and barn? If not, is it possible to secure an abun-
dant supply of pure running water at reasonable
expense? Are there springs or unfailing streams
in the pastures? We cannot lay too much emphasis
on this.

Social and human factors: Are the neighbors

132 THE COW

of the type and nationality that we wish our chil-
dren to grow up among? Is there a good school?
Is there a live church? Is there a community
conscience and consciousness? Is there a good
sized village or small city within easy driving dis-
tance by automobile? These may be intangible
factors not easily translated into terms of dollars,
but we cannot afford to ignore them. A man who
buys a farm chooses a home not only for himself
but, it is to be hoped, for his descendants as well.
Broad and smiling acres and barns that burst with
crops avail little if the human conditions are
wrong.

A man must choose a farm not only as a place
where cows may be maintained and milk cheaply
produced and advantageously marketed but also
as a place where he may help rear a worthy agri-
cultural civilization and found an enduring and
contented family life.

XIV
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE DAIRY BARN

WE may have a herd of excellent cattle and a
good farm but if the barns are inconvenient or
poorly adapted to their purpose, the entire business
will be unsatisfactory and perhaps unprofitable.
Satisfactory barns are rarely made in an archi-
tect’s office. They grow under the hand of the man
who really knows the routine of harvesting crops
and caring for cows. The country, especially near
large cities, is full of so-called model farms with
very expensive and sometimes very artistic barns,
but most of them are models only of how barns
ought not to be constructed. Under the most
favorable conditions, doing the chores calls for a
rather appalling expenditure of time and energy,
but a poorly planned barn and stable may easily
double the labor. It should be said in passing that
farming is about the only business in the world
at which rich men deliberately play without pre-
tension that there should be a connection between
income and outgo. Many of these model barns
load every cow with an overhead charge for her

shelter which, if really charged against the busi-
133

134 THE COW

ness, would effectually dispose of any possibility
of profit.

As for the cow herself, her esthetic sense is en-
tirely undeveloped. Some few fundamental condi-
tions she enjoys and her welfare demands that as
far as possible these should be supplied. Her
stable should be well lighted, well ventilated,
reasonably warm and the stall should be bedded
and so arranged that she may stand or lie with
comfort. But she cannot appreciate the sanitary
gleam of white tile nor the elegance of nickeled
stall fittings. Concrete floors and foundation, and
hemlock construction above suit her perfectly.

If a man is making plenty of money in some
other business and spending it on a farm, there is
nothing to forbid him erecting a barn ornate
enough to gratify his heart’s desire. There are
also some breeders handling valuable herds who
have many visitors and purchasers and beautiful
and expensive stables may have an advertising
value that justifies the cost. However, dairying as
a. whole is a severely utilitarian business where
the margin of profit is small. The barn and stables
at best are large and important items of capital
expenditure and the business demands as low cost
as is consistent with convenience and the comfort
and hygienic welfare of the occupants. It should
be noted that the convenience of the barn and the
welfare of the cattle do not necessarily go together.
There are barns in which it is easy to feed and care

THE DAIRY BARN 135

for the cows but where not enough attention has
been paid to ventilation, lighting and comfortable
stalls. More commonly, especially in the preten-
tious barn, the welfare of the cattle has been looked
after, but that of the herdsman forgotten. One
finds hay dragged long distances by the forkful
through narrow alleys, silage carried in baskets
from remote corners and manure laboriously re-
moved by wheelbarrows.

A fairly standard type of dairy barn construc-
tion has now been evolved. It is a building from
thirty-two to thirty-six feet wide and as long as
necessary to house the desired number of cattle.
The cows stand in stanchions in two parallel
rows facing outward toward the air and light and
feeding alleys and there will be a driveway through
the center behind them through which a wagon may
be driven or a carrier rolled for the removal of the
manure. These general dimensions are correct.
A barn narrower than this will be crowded and if
wider it will be poor economy of space.

The arrangement of floor plan just indicated
Will be best in most cases. However, under the
rather unusual circumstances when it is expected
that the cows will rely mainly on green soiling
crops fed in the stables, it may be wiser to reverse
the position of the cows and have them stand
facing each other so that loads of forage may be
driven through the central feeding alley and
pitched directly into the mangers. It must be

136 THE COW

repeated, however, that this arrangement is not
good so far as light, ventilation and clean stable
walls are concerned, and if employed at all it must
be in cases in which soiling is to be a very impor-
tant part of farm practice. Outside of these rather
fixed dimensions and somewhat fundamental plans,
the details may vary to suit the wishes or special
needs of the owner, but never under any circum-
stances forgetting the convenience in following the
routine of caring for the herd.

A great variety of methods and devices for stalls
for the cattle has been advised and patented and
used to some extent, but practically all experienced
herdsmen now agree that some form of swinging
iron stanchion is the best solution of the problem.
These stanchions should be hung with a short chain
at top and bottom so as to allow the cow a certain
degree of freedom and liberty of movement. Each
cow will need floor space from thirty-six to forty-
two inches in width and there should be about four
and one-half feet from the manger to the gutter
or drop, varying with the size of the cow. Various
firms are engaged in the business of supplying
fittings for cow stables and these carry a very ex-
tensive line comprising almost everything that can
be suggested. Such manufacturers are glad to
furnish detailed plans and to make estimates of
cost.

Stables, even when rigid economy is sought,
should be constructed with manger, gutters and

THE DAIRY BARN 137

floors of concrete on the score of permanency, sani-
tation and even of first cost. There are many
places about the stable where wood is short-lived
and unsatisfactory at best.

In addition to the regular stabling for the milk-
ing herd, a liberal number of box-stalls should be
provided that may be used as quarters for cows
about to drop calves or for exceptionally good
animals to which it is desired to give special atten-
tion. These stalls may also be utilized as calf pens.
Such stalls and pens may be inexpensively con-
structed of wood, or, if means permit, they may
be purchased ready to erect from dealers. Iron
box-stalls are rather high in first cost, but they
have many advantages in the way of neatness and
durability.

Hay-mows should be provided above the stable
and the hay dropped down through chutes directly
into the feeding alleys. Most professional archi-
tects and sanitarians will not approve of this ar-
rangement, but any one who has really served his
apprenticeship around a barn will understand the
simplicity and labor-saving advantages of the
plan. Moreover, the objections are on the whole
theoretical.

Light should be provided in abundance, the only
limit being that in cold weather a single thickness
of glass allows heat to be lost very rapidly and, as
will be emphasized later, this is serious in severe
climates.

138 THE COW

The best ventilation will be secured by a system
of intake and outtake air flues, the latter extending
from a point near the floor and carried up through
the upper stories to a point well above the ridge
of the roof. This general plan has been rather
widely popularized under the name of the “King
system.” It should be said that the system is
rather expensive to install. Like fire-place chim-
neys, they have sometimes failed to act as expected,
the draught being in the wrong direction. An-
other plan very widely used on account of sim-
plicity and low first cost is merely to replace some
of the windows with ordinary cotton muslin. This
admits some light and also allows the air to filter
slowly through while avoiding strong direct
draughts.

If possible, a stable should be built warm enough
so that it will never freeze even in the coldest
weather. This is not entirely on account of the cow
herself, because she is a native of rather cold
climates and is probably less sensitive to low tem-
peratures than we sometimes think. However, no
item of stable comfort is more important than
individual water basins for each cow so that she
may help herself at any time of day or night; but
this very desirable arrangement is forbidden unless
the stable is entirely frostless. Freezing once or
twice during the winter will ruin the whole system
by bursting pipes and water basins. A stable must
be very warmly constructed to remain above freez-

THE DAIRY BARN 139

ing during a midwinter night when it is twenty
below zero outside and a howling gale driving in
its frigid blast at every crack and nail-hole. The
side walls must be double with a good dead air
space, or better yet, a chaff or saw-dust packing,
and over head there should be a hay-mow. In ad-
dition, the ceiling should be fairly low and the
stable filled with cows. The writer, living on the
high lands of the central New York plateau with
a rather iron-clad winter climate, realizes how
much care is necessary to secure a stable in which
water buckets may be installed with safety.

Always in planning a barn there will be many
details to consider. Silage is heavy and must be
handled in large quantities. Therefore, it is of
prime importance to have the.silos so located that
the contents will be thrown out as near as possible
to the feeding mangers.

Very often it will be wisest to have the barn
built in the T or L form, the main part containing
the lines of stanchions for the milking herd, while
the wing may be devoted to .box-stalls and calf
pens and perhaps with quarters for horses. How-
ever, city milk inspectors do not approve of the
very convenient feature of having the farm teams
close to the cows.

When the slope of the land permits, the “over
shot” type of barn with the main drive-way on the
second story has many advantages. The barn of
the writer has the rather unusual feature of the

140 THE COW

drive-way on the third story, but this construction
is not usually practical unless a fairly steep hill-
side is available to help gain entrance. As far as
possible the mows should be kept clear of all cross
timbers that interfere with the free use of grappel
horse-forks or slings in unloading hay or un-
threshed grain.

The so-called “gambrel” or “hip” roof gives
much more overhead storage room than the usual
gable type and at a relatively small increased cost.
Even when economy is very necessary, a first-class
metal roof or perhaps even better, a slate roof, will
be cheapest in the end. It may be added that a
system of lightning-rods properly installed ought
to enable the dairyman to rest better during
thunder-showers.

XV
CONCERNING DAIRYING AS A BUSINESS

THE writer lives on an old farm in the Hill-Coun-
try of eastern New York just where the western
foothills of the Catskills merge themselves with the
central New York plateau. We have been farm-
ers on this land since 1800. It is a farm that,
judged by corn-belt standards, is too hilly and )
stone-strewn for easy or successful farming. It is ~
a farm where the side-hill plow will always find
a place and there are many fields from which the
tractor and hay-loader will be forever barred. But
the hills are good hills nevertheless, great furrows
from the glacial plow, and the bowlder-clay and
limestone drift of which they are composed make
a soil where grass and alfalfa and oats are much
at home. The farm lies high above sea level and
we do not grow corn as easily as if we were a
thousand feet lower or a few hundred miles further
south. More and more with the years we and all
our neighbors are discovering that we belong in
the dairy belt and that our best agricultural oppor-
tunity lies in the keeping of cows. From earliest

boyhood my farm activities have been linked with
141

142 THE COW

the dairy herd. The daily yield of cream consti-
tutes the means by which we live, so I have in mind
to set down very briefly my philosophy, my stead-
fast faith, concerning the business of cow-keeping.
Let it be said first that dairying is surely no
sluggard’s job. In all the devious ways by land
or sea, in shop or mart or roaring city canyon by
which men gain a livelihood, there is none other
occupation so insistent, so exacting in its demands.
Like Tennyson’s brook, it goes on forever. There
is something almost appalling or pitiful in its
unending routine. I remember how my good father,
noting this fact, used to quote, half humorously,
half seriously, the phrase of Solomon the Wise,
“For there is no discharge in this war.” It is
almost as regular and unchanging as the Proces-
sion of the Equinoxes. Come what may, though
the heavens fall, the cow demands her usual atten-
tion. The day that the master of the farm dies,
she must be fed and milked. On the great day
when the daughter of the home is given in mar-
riage, there can be no deviation. The fruit-grower
or the crop farmer may labor hard but on Saturday
night he may forget his task till Monday dawn.
There are many dairy farms where the irreducible
minimum of Sunday chores will constitute more
than the eight-hour day which union labor insists
leaves not enough time for rest and play. We
cherish a family tradition that for more than a
century there has never been a night when in our

DAIRYING AS A BUSINESS 143

house there was not a fire on the hearth and a
light in the window, but the reason is that the
exigencies of our business were such that never
under any circumstances could the plant close
down.

Dairying is in no way a get-rich-quick proposi-
tion. There are certain types of farming, like fruit-
growing and vegetable-gardening, in which the
possible value of production to the acre is very
large and where a fortunate conjunction of good
yields and high prices sometimes give the farmer
returns that constitute the financial romance of
agriculture. For example, it is possible to find in-
stances in which peaches or onions or strawberries
or lettuce have given gross returns of more than a
thousand dollars from single acres. Nothing of
this nature can ever come about from the sale of
dairy products. Intelligently and industriously
followed, the business ought generally to yield a
profit, but the margin above cost of production will
never be very large. The breeding of registered
cattle and the exploitation of the pure-bred busi-
ness is very different. This calls for judgment and
skill of a very high order together with a certain
gift of salesmanship and a full appreciation of the
value of publicity. Some few men of great energy
and special ability have made money very rapidly
in this field. Selling market milk or butter or
cheese will never afford a foundation for any agri-
cultural wonder-tales.

144 THE COW

Another weakness of the milk business from a
commercial standpoint is the fact that the product
must be sold as rapidly as produced and that once
production is under way it cannot be arrested
quickly to conform to the demands of a falling
market. By aid of cold storage, butter and cheese
and other milk products may be held for some
months in good condition, but market milk must
find its final market within twenty-four hours of
its production. Save in a few special cases, the
dairyman has ceased to be a manufacturer and
has become merely a producer of raw materials.
While theoretically at least the very perishable
nature of his product has left the dairyman at the
mercy of the dealer and manufacturer, yet as a
matter of fact the demoralization of the milk mar-
ket never approaches that sometimes experienced
in fruits and truck.

One of the advantages of the dairy business is
its stability. The dairyman is never caught up to
new and undreamed-of heights of prosperity. It
is probable that through a series of years no
other agricultural product shows a curve of prices
so regular or so closely estimated in advance. The
rise and fall of dairy prices, with certain minor
variations, is almost as regular as the seasons.
Always the lowest prices of the year come in April,
May and June, then start to advance and reach
the peak in November and then begin an orderly
decline to the low point again in April. No man

DAIRYING AS A BUSINESS 145

can possibly make even an intelligent guess as to
the price of potatoes or apples or cabbage or onions
a year from now, but we are fairly safe in saying
that the price of dairy products will not vary
greatly from the average of past seasons or from
the general average. price level of all commodities.
This enables the dairyman to plan for the future
with an assurance that is hardly allowed in other
farm business. Even in the midst of industrial
panics and crumbling prices such as has come to
us in the wake of the Great War, his products have
exhibited relative price stability.

There is a certain element of safety and security
in our business. The dairy specialist may produce
only one product, but he is surely not a one-crop
farmer. Surplus supplies of hay are readily car-
ried over from one year to another and almost
never do we have a failure of all the crops of the
dairy farm.

The greatest argument for the business of cow-
keeping is that above any other type of agriculture
it makes for soil enrichment. In America we have
developed a remarkable agriculture and have made
our typical farmer efficient beyond any other in
the world. No other tiller of the soil anywhere
produces as much food to a man (not to the acre)
as does the American husbandman. We have also
succeeded in wringing wealth from the soil as the
development and resources of the agricultural
states attest. However, we have not yet demon-

£,

146 THE COW

strated that our kind of agriculture can endure
through many centuries. The good dairyman need
have no doubts or misgivings on that score. If he
carefully conserves all the manure and puts it on
the fields and supplements his home-grown rough-
age with purchased concentrates, he may go for-
ward in the calm.assurance that where he keeps
cows today he may keep still more cows in days to
come. He will have the satisfaction of knowing
that he will “leave the soil better than he found it”
and he will be able to hand down to his children
an ever richer heritage.

There remains at least one more consideration
and it is a rather intangible one. Somehow or
other it cannot be gainsaid that dairying makes
for agricultural and community stability. Farm
tenantry is in many of its aspects unfortunate and
a menace to our ideal country-side development.
The typical tenant has no real abiding place and
he makes a crop and then moves on, seeking new
fields of adventure. When a man acquires flocks
and herds, he begins to strike root in the soil.

The relative permanency of dairying, the all-the-
year-round character of the industry, the regularity
of it, the high intelligence which it demands and
the increasing value and productivity of dairy
farms are all factors that give special dairy com-
munities the best developments of our rural life.

DAIRYING AS A BUSINESS 147

It is mid-July. Once again we are making the
hay on Hillside Farm. In the matter of hay, it isa
fat year. I hardly know where we shall store the
first crop, to say nothing of the aftermath. It is
only twenty-seven years ago that we built what we
still call the “new barn.” At first it used to hold all
our crops with room to spare, but it does so no
longer. Any farm fully stocked with cows where
much grain is purchased and where all the manure
is carefully gia and wisely used, grows ever more
productive. I suppose we have doubled crop pro-
duction since my father’s youth.

I look out across a meadow where there seems
hardly room for the windrows to lie. Over there
a half mile is the steep rough hill-pasture—our .
“mountain.” I can see the herd as the animals |
work back and forth across it,—blurs of yellow |
and white on the brown-green background. Above
the upper line of the pasture the woods begin and -
run to the top, green and deep, wonderfully cool
and refreshing to the eye. I can remember very
clearly when I was sure that this horizon was the
very place where the sky came down.

It is hot and bright today. I can hear the
clattering song of the mower on my neighbor’s
farm. I can hear the shouts of our own men as
they urge the straining horses to drag the heavy
hayloader up the grades. Every little while—two or
three times an hour when things are going well—
a swaying load of hay comes up the lane and is

148 THE COW

swallowed up within the barn. I am mowing it
away. It is hot up here under the roof, as hot
perhaps as in the steel furnaces where it is the
fashion to pity the men who toil. It takes only a
few moments to unload hay by modern methods,
but it means dust and sweat: and weariness.

So I am moved to a hay-mow meditation. Some-
times our business seems a curiously futile per-
formance, like traveling always in a circle. All
the growing season from April to November we
toil to grow and gather the crops that shall fill
the great barns and silos. And then all the re-
mainder of the year we devote to feeding out the
crops we have gathered with such pains, and when
spring comes we have always what we had the
year before,—an empty barn. And always in fair
weather and foul we milk the cows. Does it not
seem a bootless task? Sometimes perhaps I ask
myself this question. Yet I remember: Take care
of the soil and the soil will take care of you. For
a hundred years and more my people have worked
for this old hill farm, and have lived by it and on
the whole it has answered to their care. A hundred
years ago it sent a boy to college and it is sending
boys and girls to college still. Of the by-gone men
who tilled it, none ate the bread of idleness and
none has known want. I like to remember that
out of its soil for all those years has been nourished
a wholesome civilization and a generous life.

ge Of COWS, scaciouueecnne mie anieweahe Ware Male RS 107
American Indians, agriculture of ................ 45
pioneer and his ox team ...........004. 24

Ayrshire cattle: ic siice este sivene tae eee wae ean 79
Bakewell, Thomas ..........0...005 cp aberalwitle te ote 12, 173
Barns, construction of .........-.. eee ee eee eeees 133
ornate type not desirable ..............5005 133
standard dairy type .......... cee eee eeeeee 135

Beet Cattle: xa 'osho ecassiaiete dicots fee oul sae wee eee 80
Bos indicus .......... rah bvayala acatece lyon! Seve vgngue eve vaieue; ares 23
TAUTUS§ Ge ieesces eae rb ee Hk wae ae 1.9, 22
Bot-fly is eecscnsevstenaiees ee ee . 91
Breeds, selection of ........s0ceeeeeenes fee eaee oaths 80
Bulls, vicious ......... eee e reece eee eeee senionet dauhee 14
Calf, barn feeding of during first summer ........ 86
birth- Of csscsew codes aewav sin aickes eee eon 16

care of by its mother .... 0... 2 cece eee renee 20
feeding of the .......ce ee eee eee cece eeees 84.
instincts of ........-0.. eee eee er ee 18
mother love for ....... ec eee eee e sere ee eneee 17
pens, construction Of ..........sseseeeeeeee 137
SEOUTS. cocacecis Slats isa aeceutcw aay ese ceis ers eb ecu B aolene era aces 99
teaching it to drink from a pail ............. 18
Calling cry for COWS ...+..seceee eee neeeeetneees 2
Calves, number to be reared ....- se cee eee cence 112
Catskill Mountains ........cec cee ceecc eee eence 141
Cattle, breeds of cavern re vewe ores reserve 74, 78
Cave man and his COW ....... eee e cece ne aees 21, 23
Cherry Valley massacre .........eseseeeeeeeeeee 46

150 INDEX

Climate desirable for the dairy farm .............- 131
Coffee cow ......... ee ee rere eee AY
Concrete, used in stable construction ............-+: 137
Conformation as a measure of dairy capacity ........ 123
Contagious abortion ....... 0. cc ccc c eee eee eee ee 99
Corn-belt farmer ...... 0... ccc eee eee eee eee eeen 3
Corn silage isa aa tek a we eickiae oeigeie wales eaten s SENS 127
Cow, at pasture and at rest ........... cece cece 39

changed by her environment .............00- 34

color and markings ...............eeseeee » 9384

domestication. of ........ cc cece cece eee e eens 21

esthetic sense undeveloped ................0 134

general physical appearance ............... 25

intelligence of ...... Mises ST lacie eng ener 57

native country of ....... 0. cc cece eee e cece 10

POSEUTERS. Sacee5 sg @ Saseaghs Ginter stees where eral peiraale. 4 124

Paths): diene wae tea w ce tetera aisle es 57

TICS: ies ets Bae See Sele ee Woman ew axle oceans 136
COO. 2 ieissinclelea saree oGiarerenomie seh ona ees ws 28
Dairy Farms: i s006.5ieesyce oi tsciecarelsse g/% eeigie(s's Wivwatee’ 124
DehOrnineqiwa «iawn acer avy seweeceuser cue uses 31
Depreciation of dairy herd ...........ceeeeeeeuee 110
Diseases of cattle ..........0000.. jsouiap marcela 99
Early cattle breeders ...... sai ge at tk Goa eae aces bide 73
Evolution of the cow ........ccccceueeeeeeee vse. 10
Farm management for the dairy farm, a system of.. 126
Fighting among cows and bulls ...............0005 37
Fowls, spring-time egg-laying ......... doshas suate ahaa 16
Pre MALIN: shied sie) vcoteesaea iawn gees sagen aoe heels 30
Gait of the COW ....... cece eee eee cece ee eeees 38
Gambrel roofed barns ........ arael eet saavhuss aleve caste 140
Gar get oie Sci a grts cise doa thea Matas de eae Ree ae 103
Gestation lag in the cow ......... sichexeolech Netaes 83
Grades sacs) tik anaverord tig aden ote arate please Aah ee AS 113

Guernsey cattle 2... 0c een cas cscs beens sees aves, 48
Hambletoniin 10) cee niyeeeeaseeresey id eaves tale 114
5 Hay OWS’ cok sce teu au ve waeaeueeeediasaes 137
Heifers, age at which to breed ...........0+-eee ees 87
Herd-books .............0... eee ee ee 76, 78
Hill Country .......... ae SAS ste a 1, 65, 68
Hillside: Wary asus cacusacesietavaes ene nseseiees 141
PASTUTCS 3.) Gis eka tence Mines oes 63

Hollow: Horn: oii cnccisniwaen dese ce ne seems wae 29
PONS EOIN 8 a's coho cites Gute ose Ghi ts ala a ay avs aouapeie eee 78
Hlornless: Cattle. o:. sissies trdiw odes, eg Grate: seca aided ela vatans 31
Horse, method of grazing ..,........0ceeeeceeees 28
Insect pests of cattle 2.0... . cece cece cee e eee ene: 91
TiOTVSEYS paces aco Wa ie bo wise Hote PED alee ras 8 ee face 78
Judging cattle ....... cece cece cee ee eee cee .. 116
Jume pastures ....... cence cece rece cence ee nenenns 58
Kerry cattle: cccce.cdseieoissdeissensesa cisewin 32
Kingdom of the cOW ........ cece cence eeennecnee 8
Hiée: On “Cattle: oc. Geared sine oe ae eee = beet aeee , 92
Lighting of cow stables ............... eee 137
Markets, influence on dairying ...........2..0005- 7
outlets for milk ......... cee eee eee eee 96

DM FOVOr = ie. ciek cine ase aad taue’ Saad ons: pave aye ato ters elas eitieiale 101
veins ..... gi StledeC Say ane ia Wels 1 WHI SiMe Slate ei oss 122
Milking machines ..........eeeecsceeeeenneeee 98
Modern barn methods .......... esse cecececeere 48
Napoleon’s dictum ............ Risnise BuSaa wis Sieesee we 120
Negroes as dairymen .......0-ssesceaneseeesnaes 5
New York state, dairy importance ...............8 49
Old agricultural East ............... pansidisiecneaaee 65
NOW8O8 «esc aed we SAE Rew ee on RAR ale 65
Orchards? si. wa Ses we Rae eae ee 63
BtOne “WALI: xs erdasek ei sed eee eee eae «ee. 66
time dairy ideas ....... acelat ie iausstuavanses eas Se seaze’y, 4?

wall layer ....ssesesccssvcevesess sia aaie wane 69

152 INDEX

“Over shot” barn plan ..... ied iweuwevew se sae ines 100
Parturient apoplexy .......cccecccccccccrcecrecs 101
Parturition of the cOW ....cccceccevcccccccverees 82
Pastures ......ceeeenceereces lececievesesesccesee 50
ancient and modern times ..........e00-- 48
decline of .........esee0e. fia seen nets 57
treatment of ..... F-pAGiG Yow are alee: Hib ose sseXs wee =54
Permanency of the dairy business ......... Se Ba eres 146
Polled breeds ...:....s.eeseeeeeees Soa Wai alee we 31
Potash, dehorning calves with .......... sa byeeeuereee 32
Primitive cow ...........- taidke ees Bieta Perri 9, 11, 12
Psychology of the cow .. 5.2.2.0 sceeeeceeeececees 40
Pure-Dred) CAtHE: :5 sate Vales are wigurs vwisre adele wale we 143
Quack cow doctor ........ccececcccvecccsceceees 29
Queen bee, number of eggs laid by .............4-. 36
Racial stocks, influence on dairying ............... 6
Rations, compounding .............. see eeeeeeees 93
Regions adapted to dairying .......-.......00000: 49
Renewal of the dairy herd .................5. 107, 110
Scale of points in judging cows .............. 118, 119
Sheep, domestication of ..............0eeeeeeee 13, 15
She wolf of Remus and Romulus ................. 25
Shetland pony ........... cee cece cece een ee eees 72
UP EATA a) JOU einen iene ann aeunane ke anee ees 142
Summer versus winter dairying .................. 95
Social and human factors on the dairy farm ........ 131
Soil conservation ......... ccc cece ence cee eeees 145
desirable for dairy farm ............ccceeeees 130
Soiling cattle ..............ceeeee Bele aiaaua lot etek 57
Spring-time birth of young ......... avage in 6 eoaiuiiavatecere 15
Stability of dairy business ....... see eiene afedutyuraecatens 144
OOK Cote Bil iiuod banged teem na Calssas Gude 144
Swine, breeds of ...... Uoeoe Woah ne ew ab eet wie Oar 74,
Taming as distinguished from domestication ........ 22

Teeth of COWS ........c ccc ceeccccccccuceceeeuan 109

INDEX 153

Temperature of cow stables ...... fs oi viete'sa ais 6905 138
Teist Of COWS -succuse concise teseucws (area alee sales 31
Topography of a good dairy farm ........ Wie oe aia 130
Tuberculosis in cows .........e.e0e. eo eis aiaseieteraeiats 102
Twins and multiple births ............eceeeeeeeee 30
Udder in cows, sheep, horse and pig ........-+-+00- 30
Water buckets in stable .............eceeeeee ... 138

Uppy for WOws. 2c iaadedencisan pases ee's 93, 131
Wedge shape iti COWS i vos ane aeavevn ve weaneneeen es 118
Weights of cattle ............0005- wergrOeidereisipelee! Oe
Wild cow of Europe ............0eeceeceeeees --. 10
Winter dairying i.e ce esos seat ca saa Beinn a se we 95

Wolf-in-the-tail ....... bs she ln ataeena tie sua aislatare sevdeceetes, 29